City of Thorns, Ben Rawlence
City of Thorns, Ben Rawlence
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City of Thorns
Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp

Author: Ben Rawlence

Narrator: Derek Perkins

Unabridged: 11 hr 49 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 04/26/2016

Synopsis

Situated hundreds of miles from any other settlement, deep within the inhospitable desert of northern Kenya, Dadaab is a city like no other. Its buildings are made from mud, sticks, or plastic, its entire economy is grey, and its citizens survive on rations and luck. Over the course of four years, Ben Rawlence became a first-hand witness to a strange and desperate limbo-land, getting to know many of those who have come there seeking sanctuary. Among them are Guled, a former child soldier who lives for football; Nisho, who scrapes an existence by pushing a wheelbarrow and dreaming of riches; and schoolgirl Kheyro, whose future hangs upon her education.

In City of Thorns, Rawlence interweaves the stories of nine individuals to show what life is like in the camp and to sketch the wider political forces that keep the refugees trapped there. Rawlence combines intimate storytelling with broad socio-political investigative journalism, doing for Dadaab what Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers did for the Mumbai slums. Lucid, vivid, and illuminating, City of Thorns is an urgent human story with deep international repercussions, brought to life through the people who call Dadaab home.

About Ben Rawlence

Ben Rawlence is a former researcher for Human Rights Watch in the horn of Africa. He is the author of Radio Congo and has written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian, the London Review of Books, and Prospect. He lives in the Black Mountains in Wales with his wife and daughter.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Melissa on February 11, 2016

This. book. wrecked. me. So much preventable suffering and death. Pointless and heartbreaking. I can't stop thinking about it. I can't stop thinking about the families who have spent the majority (in some cases ALL) of their lives in a refugee camp. I can't stop thinking about the stories that my own......more

Goodreads review by Kavita on September 24, 2018

I already knew a lot about Dadaab, since I had been fascinated by the idea of a refugee camp where people lived for generations and lived, worked, and died there. I was familiar with the horrors of the 1992 civil war which started in Somalia by reading Ayaan Hirsi Ali's book. And I also happened to......more

Goodreads review by Brenda on January 16, 2016

Goodreads Giveaway. Yay! I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, the author did exhaustive investigation into these people's lives. That much is obvious. The harder thing is that it doesn't seem to have any organization or direction, and it read pretty dryly. This is a huge culture shock......more

Goodreads review by Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship on July 10, 2016

This is a good book on an important topic. Dadaab is an enormous refugee camp with several hundred thousand residents, located in a desert area of Kenya near the border with Somalia. For nearly 25 years, Somalis fleeing civil war and famine at home have come to the camp – at this point, an entire ge......more

Goodreads review by Jakub on March 14, 2021

Książka Rawlence'a w dość prosty sposób przedstawia, co kryje się pod określeniami pomocy i obozów dla uchodźców. Oddając głos mieszkańcom obozu Dadaab w północnej Kenii, obrazuje rzeczywistość, która ich tam spotyka. Bohaterami są zarówno ludzie nie znający życia poza tym w obozie, żyjący w nim naw......more

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