The village Indian
By Abbas Khider

Photo: © Goethe-Institut London/Nicolas Gäckle There is a mysterious Arabic manuscript on the  inter-city train from Berlin to Munich, apparently not belonging to anyone, in which the life story of the person who accidentally finds and reads it, is told eight times in eight different ways.

In his debut novel, Abbas Khider tells the story of a young Iraqi who was imprisoned under the rule of Saddam Hussein and now flees war and oppression. Struggling to get by in different countries as a private tutor, a casual laborer, and a waiter, he constantly seems to be chased by misfortune and yet time and again to be saved in a miraculous way. On his journey through North Africa and Europe, he meets refugees from all over the world who sacrifice much while seeking a life without hunger and war. The conjunction of their voices and fates in Khider's novel become a modern realistic fairy tale.

Abbas Khider merges the tragic and the comic, the grotesque and the mundane, the exotic Orient with the life experience of a refugee. His uncompromising view and the casualness in which he portrays the world’s misery and its wonders are impressive.