Scattered

**A Guardian book to look out for in 2024**

A powerful, evocative and deeply personal journey into the refugee crisis past and present

In 2015, journalist Aamna Mohdin travelled to Calais to report from the frontlines of the refugee crisis. It was on her return to London, when she discussed her experiences with her parents, that she came face-to-face with a reality she had been outrunning for nearly two decades: that she had been a refugee herself.

Aamna herself had arrived in the UK aged seven, after her parents fled war-torn Somalia. Determined to piece their scattered family history together in the present, she set off on a mission: first into the past, to uncover her parents’ experience of displacement in their own words; and then on the road, first to Somalia, and then to the refugee camp in Kenya that was her home in early childhood.

Along the way, Aamna would not only confront the history and legacy of the devastations of war and displacement, but also came face-to-face for the first time with her identity: as a Somalian coming back to her homeland for the first time; as a refugee; and as a black British woman, and a journalist.

Scattered is a young woman’s exploration of where she came from; a powerful reportage from the frontlines of a refugee crisis in the past and present; an epic journey of returns and reunions, of facing the past and reckoning with trauma; and above all, a defiant and joyful celebration of family and the third culture kid experience.