The Invisible Crowd
‘A fierce, big-hearted novel.’ Joe Treasure, author of The Book of Air‘Pushes us to find our kinder selves.’ Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You‘A wonderful book.’ Maurice Wren, Chief Executive of the Refugee CouncilOne of the Guardian’s Readers’ Books of the YearLong listed for Not the Booker PrizeAwarded the Victor Turner Prize in 20182nd March 1975In Asmara, Eritrea, Yonas Kelati is born into a world of turmoil. At the same time, on the same day, Jude Munroe takes her first breath in London, England.Thirty Years LaterBlacklisted in his war-ravaged country, Yonas has no option but to flee his home. After a terrible journey, he arrives on a bleak English coast.By a twist of fate, Yonas’ asylum case lands on Jude’s desk. Opening the file, she finds a patchwork of witness statements from those who met Yonas along his journey: a lifetime the same length of hers, reduced to a few scraps of paper.Soon, Jude will stand up in court and tell Yonas’ story. How she tells it will change his life forever.Fearless, uplifting and compelling, The Invisible Crowd is a powerful debut novel about loyalty, kindness – and the brief moments which define our lives.Amazon reviewers love The Invisible Crowd:‘One of the best novels I’ve read this year.’‘I found myself absorbed from page one.’‘A delight to read while also being thought provoking and super relevant.’‘Beautifully crafted, emotionally resonant, I highly recommend it.’‘A debut novel with a huge heart.’‘The Invisible Crowd is compelling from the first page and will pull your heart kicking and screaming through the turmoil of finding a home, safety, and love.’
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ELLEN WILES was born in 1981 and grew up in Reading. After doing a music degree at Oxford, she did a Master’s in Human Rights Law, and then became a barrister at a London chambers, disappearing off periodically to work, including on The Bushmen Project in Botswana and with Karenni refugees in a camp in Thailand. After scribbling fiction on the side for a while, she did a Master’s in Creative Writing, and eventually quit the law. She is the author of Saffron Shadows and Salvaged Scripts: Literary Life in Myanmar Under Censorship and in Transition (Columbia University Press, 2015), which includes interviews with Burmese writers and new literary translations. She is currently doing a PhD in Literary Anthropology, researching live literature, and directs an experimental live literature project. She lives in London with her husband and two small children.
Someone has flung rainbow pepper on the air.
The hummingbirds are migrating, each alone:
Blossomcrown, Coppery Thorntail and Flame-Rumped Sapphire.
RUTH PADEL, THE MARA CROSSING
All across the country, people said that
it wasn’t that they didn’t like immigrants.
ALI SMITH, AUTUMN
Contents
We’re clinging to each other, fistfuls of flesh and bone, and battering rams are smashing over our heads leaving us stingy-eyed, breathless, a woman and her child are clinging to one of my legs each, everyone is clinging to someone or something, and I almost envy the two tiny babies slung tight to their mothers who don’t have a clue what this chaos is about, who don’t understand the enormity of this terror, because there are way too many of us piled in here, we’ve created a death trap for each other, we know this, but we need each other too, we’re all we’ve got left, and this might be the last group of faces I’ll ever see, and I’ve never seen a group of faces so petrified, and I’ve seen a lot of petrified faces, and there’s another one approaching, oh God, it’s coming, it’s coming, and we’re rising, rising up – up and up and up – and this wave is taller than the tallest cliff and my stomach clenches and our boat is vertical now and I’m clinging on with all my strength and we’re going to flip backwards and this is the end… but then we dip forward, just a little… and then we’re nearly horizontal again – we’re floating on nothingness, we’re flying – and then we SLAP down on the water, and my brain explodes through my skull and the water is roaring and children are shrieking and women are wailing and men are sobbing, and I look beyond the boat and there’s still nothing but this vast purple-grey sky bleeding into a desert of wetness you can’t drink, with a furious monster thrashing underneath the surface, waiting to devour us, and why couldn’t it have chosen a group of people who’ve had an easier life? – and now the child who’s got hold of my leg has vomited in my lap but it doesn’t matter, because we’re rising again, oh God, we’re rising, up and up and up and up…
WELCOME TO HEAVEN, HOW ABOUT A CUP OF TEA?
The cold facts about immigration – why so many asylum seekers head for Britain.
YK (Eritrea) v Home Office. That’s all you have so far. It’s 8 p.m. already, and you’re supposed to submit the skeleton argument tomorrow. You were all set to leave chambers at 6 p.m., for once, when your clerk phoned. You so nearly didn’t pick up, but the receiver tugged at your hand like a magnet.
‘Brief’s just come in for you, counsel’s sick – skelly’s due in the morning, papers being biked over now, all right?’ he barked.
It wasn’t really meant to be a question. But you still could have said no. You had the right to say no. You should have said no. But if you want to get decent work at the Bar you have start out as a Yes person, and as your old supervisor kept telling you, he got his breakthrough case by stepping in at the last minute. You trill your fingernails on the desk.
Back home, Alec will be listening to his final story before lights out. You’re a terrible mother! You should be the one reading him Burglar Bill. He’ll move onto books without pictures soon, and before you know it he’ll be off to uni. You should be spending this precious time cultivating his language development, guiding him through important moral lessons like if you burgle tins of beans and bedpans from people’s houses you have to give them back, or just feeling the warmth of his little body snuggled against yours… But unless you have a career you can’t even pay for the nursery fees you need so that you can
