Hanuman's travels - Andrei Ivanov

Shortlisted for the 2010 Russian Booker, Hanuman's Travels is a picaresque tale about two asylum seekers, a Russian-Estonian (the narrator) and an Indian (the protagonist), and their daily lives in a Danish refugee camp and on the road in the late 1990s. While dreaming of the idyllic Danish island of Lolland, the companions in misfortune survive in any way they can. Among scams, humiliations and lies, a map is drawn - one of itineraries where the hopes and the fears of marginal people flounder and intertwine. Their struggle at times engenders dismissiveness and even intolerance, but also humanity, courage and the wisdom born of experience and resignation. Andrei Ivanov was inspired to write this novel by his own vicissitudes as a stateless person living in Denmark.