Travelers – A Novel - Hardcover

Habila, Helon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393239594 ISBN 13: 9780393239591

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019

Synopsis

Award-winning author Helon Habila has been described as "a courageous tale teller with an uncompromising vision...a major talent" (Rawi Hage). His new novel Travelers is a life-changing encounter with those who have been uprooted by war or aspiration, fear or hope. A Nigerian graduate student who has made his home in America knows what it means to strike out for new shores. When his wife proposes that he accompany her to Berlin, where she has been awarded a prestigious arts fellowship, he has his reservations: "I knew every departure is a death, every return a rebirth. Most changes happen unplanned, and they always leave a scar." In Berlin, Habila's central character finds himself thrown into contact with a community of African immigrants and refugees whose lives previously seemed distant from his own, but to which he is increasingly drawn. The walls between his privileged, secure existence and the stories of these other Africans on the move soon crumble, and his sense of identity begins to dissolve as he finds that he can no longer separate himself from others' horrors, or from Africa. A lean, expansive, heart-rending exploration of loss and of connection, Travelers inscribes unforgettable signposts-both unsettling and luminous-marking the universal journey in pursuit of love and home.

About this title

Review:

Unforgettable. Helon Habila writes of individual lives--pulled apart by our wars, our failed states and our deepest fears--with insight and searing compassion.--Madeleine Thien, author of Do Not Say We Have Nothing

A moving and eye-opening novel that captures our global political moment and plumbs the many layers of life in exile, of people who are forever bereft in their 'traveling'. Helon Habila writes with the eye of a journalist, the tools of an artist, and the heart of a sober and compassionate witness.--Vu Tran, author of Dragonfish

Habila evokes the visceral, heartbreaking anguish of the outsider's dilemma...Guaranteed to promote empathy and understanding for refugees worldwide.

About the Author:

Helon Habila is the author of the novels, Waiting for an Angel, Measuring Time, Oil on Water, and Travelers and a nonfiction book, The Chibok Girls. His writing has won numerous awards including the Caine Prize, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Windham-Campbell Prize. He is professor of creative writing at George Mason University and lives in Virginia with his wife and three children.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0393239594
• ISBN 13: 9780393239591
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288