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A Novel
by Caroline Brothers
It is night, and two boys are crossing a river that is also a border. They have nothing but the clothes on their backs, their inheritance stitched into the lining of a belt, and the courage of an enormous gamble: that Europe will offer them a future they can no longer wait for in Afghanistan. Travelling by truck, by boat, by train, by bus and on foot, Aryan and his younger brother Kabir have embarked on an epic journey, clinging to an itinerary they repeat like a mantra so as not to lose their way: Kabul... Tehran... Istanbul... Athens... Rome... Paris... London.
There are moments of wonder and adventure but also battles against cold, heat, hunger, violence and exhaustion. Whether they are harvesting half-frozen oranges in Greece, or hiding behind a false wall on a truck to Italy, or sleeping under the rafters of a sawmill in France, the brothers are exploited for their labor, hustled for their money and ignored by almost everyone, except the police.
Hinterland is a novel about two children in the aftermath of trauma; underage, homeless and invisible in a foreign land. It shows what happens when the adult world rushes in, and what our universe looks like from the other side of the glass, to those displaced children who are out there, even now, on the road.
Paperback original
"Brothers shines a powerful light on the shadowy world of cross-border refugees in this compelling and empathetic account of two children seeking a chance at life a long way from home." - Library Journal
"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." - Kirkus Reviews
"Caroline Brothers's novel about two Afghani brothers making their way to London offers a moving account of [asylum seekers]... 15-year-old Aryan and his eight-year-old brother Kabir face a litany of horrors... Fortunately there is light as well as darkness. Random acts of kindness punctuate the narrative. An Iranian-American couple buy the boys new clothes. A Greek grandmother welcomes them to her table. The book's emotional heart is the relationship between the brothers - Aryan forced to assume the role of a parent, Kabir exiled so long that he can't remember the face of his dead mother. Brothers's elegant prose holds sentimentality at bay, complementing some impressive reportage." - Financial Times
This information about Hinterland was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Caroline Brothers was born in Australia. She has a PhD in history from University College London and has worked as a foreign correspondent in Europe and Latin America. She currently lives in Paris where she writes for the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times. She has published a book, War and Photography, and also writes short stories. Hinterland is her first novel.
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