Hinterland - Softcover

A heart-wrenching story of two young brothers on a long, hard road; a story that all of us should read * Barbara Trapido * What most distinguishes this book is the poetic power of the language. The landscape, the weather, the natural world and physical sensations are described with a shocking painterly intensity ... There is poetry on every page, as well as pity, and the poetry is not always in the pity but in the joy of being alive on this earth * Irish Times * Brothers does a fine, gripping job of conveying the immensity and hardship of the journey that many illegal immigrants ... must undergo ... this is an assured first novel * Metro * Presents us with the tragic reality behind the words 'refugee' and 'asylum-seeker' and brings home the terrible human consequences of war. Caroline Brothers' stark, unsentimental novel is one everyone should read * Daily Mail *

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 labour, 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.