The Lightless Sky

By Gulwali Passarlay,

Book cover of The Lightless Sky: A Twelve-Year-Old Refugee's Extraordinary Journey Across Half the World

Book description

A gripping, inspiring, and eye-opening memoir of fortitude and survival—of a twelve-year-old boy’s traumatic flight from Afghanistan to the West—that puts a face to one of the most shocking and devastating humanitarian crises of our time.

“To risk my life had to mean something. Otherwise what was it all for?”…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Lightless Sky as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I read this book when my own family was in the process of welcoming a new foster brother from Afghanistan.

Reading Gulwali’s very personal journey from Afghanistan to the UK as an unaccompanied child helped us to understand what my own brother had been through and the journey he had taken. It gave us context as to the Afghanistan he experienced and left behind, and we passed the book around the whole family and devoured it eagerly.

Gulwali’s story is raw and real and is the most powerful account of a child refugee I have ever read. 

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