Alexander Dziadosz

It isn’t surprising that two of the most interesting authors to write about the migrant crises of the last ten years were subjects of earlier waves of displacement. In a recent interview, Hoda Barakat describes her characters as ‘wanderers in the desert’, who have ‘fled poverty and violence and dictatorships and collapsing societies ... but haven’t reached a safe place’. The post office section of Voices of the Lost is, she claims, her attempt to show ‘the death of a world that used to believe in connection’. Hassan Blasim is more optimistic.