A Boston Globe Best Book of 2019 "This is the answer to the question of what contemporary fiction can do." -Edward Docx, Guardian
Accompanying his wife on a prestigious arts fellowship in Berlin, a Nigerian scholar finds there are no walls between his privileged, secure existence and the stories of others in the African diaspora, including a transgender film student seeking the freedom to live an authentic life, a Libyan doctor who lost his wife and son in the waters of the Mediterranean, and a Somalian shopkeeper who tried to save his young daughter from a marriage forced upon her by a militant commander. Both unsettling and luminous, Travelers is a lean, heartrending exploration of loss and connection. Award-winning author Helon Habila inscribes unforgettable signposts that mark the universal journey in pursuit of love and home.
Autorentext
Helon Habila is the author of Oil on Water, Measuring Time, Waiting for an Angel, and The Chibok Girls. He is associate professor of creative writing at George Mason University and lives in Virginia with his wife and three children.
Klappentext
A Boston Globe Best Book of 2019 A startlingly imaginative exploration of the African diaspora in Europe, by one of our most acclaimed international writers.
Award-winning author Helon Habila has been described as "a courageous tale teller with an uncompromising vision...a major talent" (Rawi Hage). His new novel Travelers is a life-changing encounter with those who have been uprooted by war or aspiration, fear or hope.
A Nigerian graduate student who has made his home in America knows what it means to strike out for new shores. When his wife proposes that he accompany her to Berlin, where she has been awarded a prestigious arts fellowship, he has his reservations: "I knew every departure is a death, every return a rebirth. Most changes happen unplanned, and they always leave a scar.”
In Berlin, Habila's central character finds himself thrown into contact with a community of African immigrants and refugees whose lives previously seemed distant from his own, but to which he is increasingly drawn. The walls between his privileged, secure existence and the stories of these other Africans on the move soon crumble, and his sense of identity begins to dissolve as he finds that he can no longer separate himself from others' horrors, or from Africa.
A lean, expansive, heart-rending exploration of loss and of connection, Travelers inscribes unforgettable signposts—both unsettling and luminous—marking the universal journey in pursuit of love and home.