City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World's Largest Refugee Camp is a history biography nonfiction work published in 2016 by Picador in the UK and Thorndike Press in the US, [1] and written by author, journalist Ben Rawlence. Generally, the book follows the stories of nine people narratively through their respective journeys through Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp, home to about 350,000 people (although the exact number is unknown and contentious).
The book's thesis can be summarized in that "the quintessential refugee experience is not so much of movement as [of] being stuck, physically and psychologically, individually and collectively. [2] "
"Located on Kenya’s border with Somalia, Dadaab was established in 1992 to house around 90,000 refugees from the civil war there. Since then it has grown into a large sprawling city in the parched desert where generations of Somali refugees are born and where the majority of those will die. [2] "
Among the characters followed throughout the book is Guled, a boy who grew up in war-torn Mogadishu, who was kidnapped and escaped from al Shabaab (an extremist terror organization); Nisho, born as his parents were fleeing Somalia in 1991 and clever Muna, who benefited from the free schooling offered at the camp. Her own strong will and education helped her to defy the strictures of her clan. "It is through their individual stories, their efforts to claw out tolerable lives, find work, have children, remain healthy, that Rawlence has built his remarkable book." [1] [2]
According to the Guardian review, [3] City of Thorns is a "remarkable book comes as a timely reminder that the vast majority of the world’s refugee population will never see European shores," [4]
A New York Times article by Caroline Moorehead states that the book "is a deeply disturbing and depressing portrait of the violence, destitution, fear, sense of hopelessness and neglect in which a large number of the world’s estimated 60 million forcibly displaced people now live." [2]
The Foreign Policy Association has recommended the book for its Spring 2019 "Great Decisions" program on Refugees and Global Migration. [5]
A refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for internally displaced people. Usually, refugees seek asylum after they have escaped war in their home countries, but some camps also house environmental and economic migrants. Camps with over a hundred thousand people are common, but as of 2012, the average-sized camp housed around 11,400. They are usually built and run by a government, the United Nations, international organizations, or non-governmental organization. Unofficial refugee camps, such as Idomeni in Greece or the Calais jungle in France, are where refugees are largely left without support of governments or international organizations.
Martha Ellis Gellhorn was an American novelist, travel writer, and journalist who is considered one of the great war correspondents of the 20th century.
Dadaab is a semi-arid town in Garissa County, Kenya. It is the site of a UNHCR base hosting 223,420 registered refugees and asylum seekers in three camps as of 13 May 2019, making it the third-largest such complex in the world. The center is run by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and its operations are financed by foreign donors. In 2013, UNHCR, the governments of Kenya and Somalia signed a tripartite agreement facilitating the repatriation of Somali refugees at the complex.
Liboi is a town in Garissa County, Kenya, at the border with Somalia.
Caroline Mary Moorehead is a human rights journalist and biographer.
The Arc of Instability is a proposed, interconnected chain of politically unstable nation states in the Asia-Pacific region. The term came into vogue in the late 1990s, proving especially popular with Australian politicians and journalists, although it has been received with negative criticism from South Pacific leaders. The Arc is also sometimes to referred to as Balkanization in a modern, Asia-Pacific context.
Bruno Geddo is an Italian national, born in Novara in 1959. He has served with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for over 30 years in Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Middle East.
Book Aid International is a UK registered charity which provides books and supports libraries in Africa and around the world. Every year the charity sends books to public and community libraries as well as libraries in prisons, refugee camps, hospitals, schools and universities. The charity works in close partnership with libraries and also helps libraries develop their services through its library support projects and programmes. In 2019, an estimated 19 million people read the books which Book Aid International provided.
Jalalaqsi (Jalalassi) is a town in the south-central Hiran province of Somalia. It is situated on the Shebelle River, between Buuloburde and Jowhar.
Occurring between July 2011 and mid-2012, a severe drought affected the entire East African region. Said to be "the worst in 60 years", the drought caused a severe food crisis across Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya that threatened the livelihood of 9.5 million people. Many refugees from southern Somalia fled to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, where crowded, unsanitary conditions together with severe malnutrition led to a large number of deaths. Other countries in East Africa, including Sudan, South Sudan and parts of Uganda, were also affected by a food crisis.
Kenya–Somalia relations are bilateral relations between Kenya and Somalia.
Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France is a 2014 book by Caroline Moorehead.
Ben Rawlence is a British writer who has written three books: “The Treeline: the last forest and the future of life on earth” (2022) Radio Congo: Signals of Hope From Africa's Deadliest War (2012) and City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World's Largest Refugee Camp (2016). From 2006 to 2013 he was a researcher for Human Rights Watch's Africa division. Rawlence has also written for The New York Times, The Guardian and London Review of Books. He lives in the Black Mountains, Wales where he is the founding director of Black Mountains College, an institution devoted to creative and adaptive thinking in the face of the climate and ecological emergency.
Mohamud Abdullahi Sheikh Siraji is a Somali politician who was elected from the state of Jubaland as a member of Federal Parliament of Somalia on the 15th of February 2018. Mohamud is the younger brother of the late Minister for Public Works and Reconstruction Abass Abdullahi Sheikh Siraji.
Forced displacement and the experiences of refugees, asylum seekers and otherwise forcibly displaced people became of increasing interest in the popular culture since 2015 with the European migrant crisis.
Wenona Mary Giles is a professor emerita in the Department of Anthropology at York University. In 2018, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Through the university, Giles helped launch the Borderless Higher Education for Refugees (BHER) project which allowed people in refugee camps to earn degrees, diplomas and certificates from Moi and Kenyatta Universities in Kenya, and from York University and UBC in Canada.
Literature on sexuality in Somalia has various focuses, from courtship, the motives behind FGM, extended singleness, marriage and the relationship between the sexes. It usually has a heterosexual focus, and norms surrounding sexuality can differ between each national depending on levels of religiosity, conservatism, location as well as other factors although a common Somali culture exists.
Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine is a 2016 non-fiction book by Catherine L. Besteman, the Francis F. Bartlett and Ruth K. Bartlett Professor of Anthropology at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.
Gloria Mwaniga is a Kenyan writer, educator and columnist for the Daily Nation and The EastAfrican. She is a graduate of the University of Nairobi and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Writing Workshop in Nigeria. In 2019, she was awarded a Miles Morland Writing Scholarship, and in 2022 her story, "Boyi," was awarded the inaugural African Land Policy Centre Story Prize. Her story was subsequently included in "Finding ground and other stories: ALPC Anthology of short stories on Land in Africa." Her work has appeared in The Johannesburg Review of Books and The White Review.
Brownkey Abdullahi is an activist and blogger who was born to Somali parents in Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya. She is the founder of the Brownkey Organization.