BOOK REVIEW
Dalila
By Jason Donald
Dalila does for the Home Office what I, Daniel Blake did for the Department of Work and Pensions, documenting in detail the effects on an individual that interminable bureaucracy creates.
A young Kenyan woman, enslaved and with her family murdered, arrives in Britain to claim asylum, and quickly comes to understand that entering the country is only the first part of the fight.
Shipped to Scotland, and plunged into a web of interviews and appointments and restrictions, she is forced to face the violence of her past in settings as equally inhuman as those that she left behind.
Author Jason Donald, once a migrant himself, juxtaposes the cultures of Nairobi and Glasgow with ease, and has found a story befitting of his experience and empathy. With the film rights already sold, Dalila stands to shine a light on the side of the migration story that never makes the news.
8/10
ADAM WEYMOUTH
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