The Refuge Abyss is a one of those rare books which come along and name the world with such exquisite precision, theoretical acumen and methodological discernment, that they are genuinely paradigm-shifting. In this necessarily painful articulation of the abyssal state to which people labelled refugees are condemned, Hyab Teklehaimanot Yohannes offers a sublimely theoretical voice and a poetics of relation and decoloniality. Alison Phipps, UNESCO Chair for Refugee Integration through Education, Languages and Arts, University of Glasgow
If you are interested in the refugee condition, this is the book you should read. Not only inspired by but also reminiscent of seminal contributions to postcolonial theory, its dark and gripping narrative draws its urgency from lived experience. Few scholars today have the courage to write so poetically, and few books manage to combine theoretical sophistication with emotional depth. In the myriad of academic publications on the subject, The Refugee Abyss stands out! Katja Franko, Professor of Criminology, University of Oslo
This deeply moving book demands our commitment from the start. We learn from people who have experienced some of the worst that humans can inflict on one another. We are invited to listen, to see, and to feel. It is a profound and ultimately uplifting experience, despite the horrors described. Mary Bosworth, Professor of Criminology, University of Oxford
This book plumbs the depths of some of the darkest places in human experience. But rather than leaving us there, it offers to lift us from the pit by gathering the poetic traces through which we can find restoration and relation. It is essential reading for anyone who cares about human relationships. Fergus McNeill, Professor of Criminology and Social Work, University of Glasgow
In this powerful and timely intervention, Hyab Yohannes performs the urgent task of unsilencing voices, recovering stories buried deep in the refugee abyss. In the process, he counters the anonymising, dehumanising, depoliticising conditions of this oppressive necropolitical reality. The book deploys Edouard Glissants acentric, relational thought in pioneering ways that transcend geographies and histories. Challenging stubbornly oppressive grammars of coloniality, The Refugee Abyss ultimately asserts poetry and poetics as steadfast traces of an emergent political imaginary. Charles Forsdick, Drapers Professor of French, University of Cambridge
