To coincide with Refugee Week (June 14-21) and reduced lockdown restrictions, we’re planning a special, non-zoom, CWR Book Group in Montpellier Park!

It’s a chance for us to meet up in person on 15 June and enjoy being together, and of course, talk about books! Many of us will be meeting for the first time.

We’ll be reading Refugee Tales, Volume I, edited by David Herd.

Poets and novelists retell the stories of individuals who have direct experience of Britain’s treatment of refugees and its policy of indefinite immigration detention. Presenting their accounts anonymously, as modern day counterparts to the pilgrims’ stories in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, this book offers rare, intimate glimpses into otherwise untold suffering.

There are a range of stories exploring many different perspectives and exposing the cruelty at the heart of Britain’s asylum system. 

Volume I has stories by Chris Cleave, Ali Smith, Inua Ellams, Patience Agbabi and many more.

If you can, please do buy the book, as the proceeds go to Kent Refugee Help and the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group.

However there are copies in the Gloucestershire library, and a couple of the stories are also available to read online:

Read The detainee’s tale by Ali Smith: 'I thought you would help me' | Books | The Guardian

Read World Refugee Day: The Lorry Driver’s Tale, as told to Chris Cleave (irishtimes.com)

We look forward to hearing what you think about these stories on 15th June!

Meet by the bandstand – we’ll find a good spot to sit ourselves down with plenty of space once we’re all together. Do bring something to sit on, and your hand sanitiser and masks just in case!  

CWR Book Group will be reading Butterfly, by Yusra Mardini. Do join us to discuss it on Tuesday 4 May 2021 at 7:30pm! 

“Yusra Mardini fled her native Syria to the Turkish coast in 2015 and boarded a small dinghy full of refugees bound for Greece. When the small and overcrowded boat's engine cut out, it began to sink. Yusra, her sister and two others took to the water, pushing the boat for three and a half hours in open water until they eventually landed on Lesbos, saving the lives of the passengers aboard.

The story of Butterfly starts in a war-torn suburb of Damascus and follows Yusra through Europe to Berlin and from there to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.”

Yusra tells her story with disarming simplicity and openness, but manages to convey the magnitude of the choices she and her family were faced with when war ripped apart their lives in Syria, and Yusra’s determination not just to survive but to continue to pursue her dreams. 

Gloucestershire Library has several copies including audio and ebook versions, or you can purchase from our local store, The Suffolk Anthology for 10% off RRP.

The Zoom details are https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83137853316?pwd=bTgrdVNyamhYS2xZeStSUDhjanQwZz09

Meeting ID: 831 3785 3316

Passcode: 20

We're kicking off 2021 properly with the CWR Book Group, reading Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. Do join us to discuss it on Tuesday 5th January 2021 at 7:30pm!

"Teeming with life and crackling with energy — a love song to modern Britain and black womanhood. Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years. Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible."

It's a tremendous book, with luminous semi-experimental prose and vivid plot that culminates in a satisfying and absolutely cracking conclusion.

Zoom login: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87384412786...

Meeting ID: 873 8441 2786
Passcode: 252134

If you want to hear more from Bernardine Evaristo on the novel itself and her historic Booker Prize win, there's a short interview with The TLS Podcast here: Bernardine Evaristo wins again | The TLS Podcast on Acast