"Rich and colorful... [Refuge] has the kind of immediacy
commonly associated with memoir, which lends it heft, intimacy,
atmosphere." -New York Times
The moving lifetime relationship between a father and a daughter, seen
through the prism of global immigration and the contemporary refugee
experience.
An Iranian girl escapes to America as a child, but her father stays
behind. Over twenty years, as she transforms from confused immigrant to
overachieving Westerner to sophisticated European transplant, daughter
and father know each other only from their visits: four crucial visits
over two decades, each in a different international city. The longer
they are apart, the more their lives diverge, but also the more each
comes to need the other's wisdom and, ultimately, rescue. Meanwhile,
refugees of all nationalities are flowing into Europe under troubling
conditions. Wanting to help, but also looking for a lost sense of home,
our grown-up transplant finds herself quickly entranced by a world that
is at once everything she has missed and nothing that she has ever
known. Will her immersion in the lives of these new refugees allow her
the grace to save her father?
Refuge charts the deeply moving lifetime relationship between a father
and a daughter, seen through the prism of global immigration.
Beautifully written, full of insight, charm, and humor, the novel subtly
exposes the parts of ourselves that get left behind in the wake of
diaspora and ultimately asks: Must home always be a physical place, or
can we find it in another person?
