A Slap in the Face

A refugee walks into the alien registration officeto speak to the clerk in charge of his case for the last time. He is furious and has only one desire: that someone actually listens to him for once. In his unmistakable style, Abbas Khider plumbs the depths of self-perception in an open society.

When Karim Mensey jumps to freedom from the loading ramp of a transporter van, he thinks he’s in France. That’s where the illegal journey he’d paid for was meant to take him. Actually he’s ended up somewhere in the depths of the Bavarian provinces. And he’ll be stuck there for the next three years. Karim has to re-invent his life-story, struggle his way through all sorts of documents and countless refugee centres. He gets involved in dubious friendships and risky love af-fairs. Then one day his temporary citizenship status is revoked and he is to be deported to Iraq. Karim is back to square one and has to square one and has to find another human trafficker - this time one who will get him out of Germany.

Abbas Khider has written a novel at once disturbing and heart-warming, a novel that poses one of the central issues of our times: what does it mean for someone if he can neither live at home nor abroad?