Amir Darwish came to the UK as an asylum seeker during the Second Gulf War, hanging underneath a lorry on a cross-channel ferry. In his second full-length collection, he seeks to rescue refugees from the popular media image as perpetrators or victims, reflecting on the trauma, suffering and pain of the world’s 22 million refugees, what they have left behind, what they have lost and where they have arrived. Dear Refugee is a book about emigration and immigration, departures and arrivals, longing and belonging, love, loss and exile.
