Ben Rawlence is the author of City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp and Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa’s Deadliest War. Born in the UK, Ben worked as a policy advisor and speechwriter to the Liberal Democratic Party before running for office himself. His political work brought him in contact with serious human rights violations in Zanzibar and led to him join the Human Rights Watch as a researcher on Africa. During 7 years with the organization working all over the continent, he became fascinated with the Dadaab refugee camp, a place that would later become the topic of his 2016 book, City of Thorns.
For HRW, Ben researched reports, lobbied governments, and appeared on radio and TV across the world. In 2013, Ben left his job and devoted himself full-time to writing and speaking. Most recently, Ben won the inaugural National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s “Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communications.”
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City of Thorns
Nine Lives in the World's Largest Refugee Camp
Picador
Situated hundreds of miles from any other settlement, deep within the inhospitable desert of northern Kenya where only thorn bushes grow, Dadaab is a city like no other. In City of Thorns, Rawlence interweaves the stories of nine individuals to show what life is like in the camp, sketching the wider political forces that keep the refugees trapped. |
For the last fifty years, the trees of the boreal forest have been moving north. Ben Rawlence's The Treeline takes us along this critical frontier of our warming planet from Norway to Siberia, Alaska to Greenland, Canada to Sweden to meet the scientists, residents and trees confronting huge geological changes. Only the hardest species survive at these latitudes including the ice-loving Dahurian larch of Siberia, the antiseptic Spruce that purifies our atmosphere, the Downy birch conquering Scandinavia, the healing Balsam poplar that Native Americans use as a cure-all and the noble Scots Pine that lives longer when surrounded by its family.
It is a journey of wonder and awe at the incredible creativity and resilience of these species and the mysterious workings of the forest upon which we rely for the air we breathe. Blending reportage with the latest science, The Treeline is a story of what might soon be the last forest left and what that means for the future of all life on earth. |
Listen to Ben speak on Alyssa Milano’s podcast, Sorry, Not Sorry.
Read an excerpt from The Treeline in The Guardian.
Check out reviews of The Treeline from the Spectator, the Star Tribune and its place among the best new writing about climate change in the Financial Times.
Read about Black Mountains College, here. See Ben on “A Bittersweet Film Review in Kenya” for the New Yorker.
Ben talks Tony Blair and foreign policy with the Guardian.
Ben Rawlence on “A Bittersweet Film Review in Kenya” for the New Yorker.
Ben talks Tony Blair and foreign policy with the Guardian.
Read Ben’s “Diary” entry for the London Review of Books.
Check out reviews of City of Thorns from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Miami Herald, and NPR.
Read stories from Dadaab refugees.
Keep up with Ben on Twitter.
Ben was awarded the inaugural National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s “Schmidt Awards for Excellence in Science Communications.”
--Baroness Rose Boycott
Praise for City of Thorns:
"[Rawlence] has done a remarkable job, bringing home the reality behind those statistics by telling us what life is really like inside one of those camps... Rawlence's description of the camp economy is fascinating and shocking... A masterful account. Next time someone refers derisively to a 'bunch of migrants,' get them to read this book."
― The Sunday Times (London)
"[A]remarkable book…. Like Dadaab itself, the story has no conclusion. Iti is a portrait, beautifully and moving painted. And it is more than that. At a time when newspapers are filled with daily images of refugees arriving in boats on Europe’s shores, when politicians and governments grapple with solutions to migration and erect ever larger walls and fences, it is an important reminder that a vast majority of the world’s refugees never get as far as a boat or a border of the developed world. They remain, like the inhabitants of Dadaab, in an indefinite limbo of penury and fear, unwanted and largely forgotten.”
― The New York Times Book Review
"[An] ambitious, morally urgent new book."
- The New York Times
“Magisterial….We see Dadaab through an accumulation of vivid impressions….[The book] moves like a thriller.”
― Los Angeles Times
“The most absorbing book in recent memory about life in refugee camps… Mr. Rawlence’s major feat is stripping away the anonymity that so often is attached to the word “refugee” by delving deeply into the lives of nine people in the camp. By doing so, he transforms its denizens from faceless victims into three-dimensional human beings. Along the way, Dadaab emerges from the ever-present heat and dust to become much more than a refugee camp. It is a real, if very peculiar, city.”
― Howard French, The Wall Street Journal