Helon Habila's fourth novel has it all - intelligence, tragedy, poetry, love, intimacy, compassion and a serious, soulful, arms-wide engagement with one of the most acute human concerns of our age: the refugee crisis...
The Guardian
A wonderful gem. . . Heartbreaking but equally life-affirming tales that beautifully connect and intertwine, leaving us longing for more
Elif ... Read moreShafak Once I started reading Travellers, I couldn't stop. With power and control, it plunges the reader into a maze of lives that crisscross between Africa and Europe...The novel has all the weight of art with the sting of breaking news. It faces the urgent questions of our times and doesn't settle for easy answers...it is indeed Habila at his best.
Leila Aboulela
Urgent, deeply empathetic, and resisting easy answers, TRAVELERS follows the interconnected lives of African immigrants and refugees in Europe and examines the meanings of freedom, diaspora and home. Habila is a masterful storyteller, and this novel a riveting testament to the power of fiction. Describing worlds and convergences that are unforgettable, Helon Habila writes of individual lives - pulled apart by our wars, our failed states and our deepest fears - with insight and searing compassion
Madeleine Thien
At once intimate and expansive, Travellers captivated me from the very first pages
Aminatta Forna
a parable of our times and Habila tells it beautifully, shedding poignant light on the world of the dispossessed and the stateless.
Mail on Sunday
Adroitly teasing out the rich quiddity of his characters' diverse journeys, he instead makes the simple yet valuable point that refugees' lives are as irreducibly complex as anyone else's.
The Observer
A quietly haunting novel that captures the untethered, unreal nature of migrant and refugee existence.
Metro
Yarns of persecution, paranoia, even manslaughter, unspool across its patchwork pattern. Habila tells them with cunning, flair and a sleight-of-hand that lightens even the gloomiest scenes.
The Spectator
In an era of mass migration, Habila suggests, stories are a common ground, a means of making ourselves at home with our homelessness.
Literary Review
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