Rodaan Al Galidi: The Leash and the Ball

They say to make friends in the Western world as a refugee you need three things – a leash and a ball (for your dog) and a piece of paper…

We first met Samir in Rodaan Al Galidi‘s 2020 novel Two Blankets, Three Sheets. Now in his new novel The Leash And The Ball, Samir finally has the chance to start his new life as a European citizen after nine years in a Dutch asylum centre. But it’s a full-time occupation for him to discover what integration really means. Happily, this distracts him from what is happening in his native land, Iraq, and from Leda, who stole his heart in the first village he stayed in after being granted refugee status. In this hilarious adventure story, we follow the lovable and gritty Samir as he talks his way into every type of accommodation to be found in this new country full of incomprehensible rules and habits. His perspective provides profound, sometimes painful insights about the West, in this timely exploration of the meaning of home, and making oneself at home against all odds.

Praise for Two Blankets, Three Sheets

No other book I have read makes the soul-destroying effects of European asylum procedures more vividly clear than this one. Foreign Affairs

Two Blankets, Three Sheets does for the beleaguered political asylum seeker stuck in legal limbo what Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 did for the hapless soldier trapped in a military at war. Translated from the Dutch into nimble and conversational English by Jonathan Reeder. It is a tale for and of our time. Los Angeles Review of Books

Rodaan’s participation in West Cork Literary Festival is supported by the Nederlands Letterenfonds / Dutch Foundation for Literature as part of their New Dutch Writing programme.