Hinterland

February 13, 2012
This debut novel from Brothers (War and Photography: A Cultural History), a former foreign correspondent for Reuters, is a compassionate and vigorous tale of orphaned Afghan brothers, Aryan, 14, and Kabir, 8, fleeing their native land to escape Taliban atrocities. Along their furtive trek to England—Aryan makes Kabir memorize their route: “KabulTehranIstanbulAthensRomeParisLondon!”—they work picking oranges in Greece, starve en route to Rome, and are finally stranded in Calais along with legions of other bedraggled refugees, including their old friend Hamid, all of whom scheme with a smuggler to get across the English Channel. “England is everybody’s dream,” says one refugee. The brothers encounter kind strangers, such as an American couple in France who pay their train fare, as well as cretins who exploit and even molest the naïve juveniles. Despite the string of hardships and setbacks, the brothers remain ebullient, even marveling how “hey must be the luckiest boys in the world” at one point. The skillfully handled backstory details their intimate family life in Afghanistan, and Iran, while the cinematic scope given to their journey underscores its immense undertaking.

March 1, 2012
School in England is the dream motivating two Afghan boys on their dangerous trek across Europe. Here they come, 15 men, following the smuggler's directions as they cross the river in full flood, the border between Turkey and Greece, part of a current phenomenon of trans-Europe migration. Accompanying them are two little guys, 14-year-old Aryan, the viewpoint character, and his 8-year-old brother Kabir. They are orphans. They lost their parents in separate terrorist attacks back home; an older brother was murdered by the Taliban. The boys have already covered many miles, spending time in Tehran and Istanbul. Now, across the river in Greece, they board a truck that makes an unexpected stop when the brothers are handed over to a waiting Greek farmer. "Here's your merchandise," says the driver. Seven months of forced labor follow; at one point Kabir is sodomized by another truck driver. Then they abscond, hopping another truck, slowly making their way to Italy and France. There's a Hollywood moment in Nice when a married couple from Los Angeles, Iranian-Americans, buys them clothes, dinner and tickets to Paris, but then it's back to reality in Calais, where swarms of Africans and Middle Easterners are living in makeshift camps. Aryan is tear-gassed by the cops and fingerprinted. The only free route to England seems to be the refrigerated truck, a potential death trap. First novelist Brothers, an Australian, is a journalist who has covered this story; she acknowledges her debt to a French language memoir by Wali Mohammadi. The question is how well her account of lost children on the march translates into fiction. How convincing is Aryan? He's a saintly, protective big brother, and so resourceful he qualifies as Superboy, but he's not individuated enough, any more than those American Good Samaritans or Idris, king of the Calais smugglers. A debut that personalizes a humanitarian crisis but fails to fully penetrate others' lives as does, say, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

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November 15, 2011

As Brothers reported in a front-page piece in the New York Times, hundreds of immigrants gather daily in Calais, readying themselves for the mad dash to Britain. Here she adds depth to this story by turning to fiction in a debut featuring two orphaned brothers from Afghanistan who trek across Europe. At first glance a strong, affecting read.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2012
Brothers' moving debut novel is the story of two young Afghan boys trekking across Europe in the hopes of finding a better life. Fourteen-year-old Aryan and his eight-year-old brother, Kabir, were first forced to flee Afghanistan after enduring the deaths of their older brother, father, and then mother. They begin their arduous journey to England in the hopes of tracking down a cousin of a family friend who has been living there, but their travels are fraught with peril. Never certain who they can trust, the boys buy passage on various trucks to cross borders between countries and look for shelter wherever they can find it. In Greece, they labor on a farm until an unscrupulous man takes advantage of Kabir's trust; in Italy, they are swindled out of train fare by a seemingly kindly old man; and in France, they find shelter with African refugees only to find themselves actively hunted by the local police. Journalist Brothers based her heart-wrenching novel on her interviews with young Afghan refugees in France.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)