The Marsh Birds - Softcover

Sallis, Eva

3.52 out of 5 stars

54 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1741146003 ISBN 13: 9781741146004

Publisher: Allen & Unwin, 2006

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As twelve-year-old Dhurgham As-Samarra’i waits at the mosque where his family was supposed to meet if separated during their attempt to flee Baghdad, he realizes that no one else is coming to meet him. Following Dhurgham, as he builds a new life for himself with no homeland, family, or hope for the future, this searing and honest novel about separation, journey, and justice probes, questions, illuminates, and humanizes important moral and social issues.

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About the Author

Eva Sallis is the author of The City of Sealions, Fire Fire, Hiam (winner of the Australian/Vogel Literary Award), and Mahjar.

From Publishers Weekly

An Iraqi boy undergoes a harrowing series of trials in Sallis's fifth novel, a harsh but only partially convincing indictment of the author's native Australia's indifference to political refugees. Twelve-year-old Dhurgham, whose well-to-do father runs afoul of the Hussein regime, gets separated from his family while fleeing Iraq and waits for them for weeks at the Great Mosque in Damascus. Eventually, he is taken in by a Syrian man named Hosni, a pedophile who steals Dhurgham's money and forces the boy into an increasingly abusive relationship that lasts five years, until Hosni fears "the threat of Dhurgham's manhood disrupting everything." Hosni sends Dhurgham to Australia, where he is placed in the Mawirrigun detention camp with hundreds of other Muslim refugees. Dhurgham, now 17 and with his refugee status in limbo, vacillates between violence and depression, ultimately launching a hunger strike that gets him transferred to New Zealand. There, he attempts to rejoin society, but the cultural differences may be too great to overcome. Sallis is well known in Australia for her politically charged fiction (Mahjar and The City of Sealions also deal with the intersection of Australia and the Middle East), but she overplays her hand, creating a portrait that is sympathetic but without much nuance. (Oct.)
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