Dans le Irish Times : Ten tales of refugees in literature

Life of Pi (2001), Yann Martel

When Pi Patel’s father decides to sell his beloved zoo in India and uproot the family to Canada, his actions set in motion a story that sees his teenage son stranded in a lifeboat hundreds of kilometres off Manila’s coast. Keeping him company are a spotted hyena, an injured zebra, an orangutan, and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, whose been hiding under the tarpaulin. This magical tale of survival and personal growth through adversity sees Pi adrift with his unlikely crew for 227 days. The novel was rejected by multiple publishers before being taken on by Knopf Canada and going on to win the Booker Prize for Martel in 2002.

The Pick-Up (2001), Nadine Gordimer

The South African Nobel Prize winner knew a thing or two about refugees, not only from her journalism in the land of apartheid but also through her marriage to a German man who had fled Nazi Germany. The Pick-Up tells the story of a mixed-race couple struggling to find a country to call their own. Julie Summers is a white woman from a financially secure South African family. Her partner Abdu is an illegal Arab immigrant. After Abdu’s visa is refused, the couple returns to his unnamed homeland, where the tables are turned and Julie must come to terms with her alien status in a foreign culture.

The Kite Runner (2003), Khaled Hosseini

The first novel by the Afghan-American writer Hosseini was an international bestseller. Centred on the friendship between Amir, the son of a wealthy Pashtun merchant, and Hassan, the son of a Hazara servant, the book follows the flight of Amir’s family from Afghanistan in the wake of the Soviet invasion and the persecution of Hazaras under the Taliban. The bonds of family is a major theme, with the author having spoken of the significance of the father-son relationships in the book in previous interviews. Hosseini’s 2007 novel A Thousand Splendid Sons looks at the lives of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime.

Pour lire la suite : http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/ten-tales-of-refugees-in-literature-1.2200747