“We wanted the strangers to be comfortable. We wanted them to be more like us, and to be more responsive to our own willing faces. We wanted them to be available." When two strangers arrive in a rural town, refugees from a disaster they cannot name, why do they end up locked in a cage and dehumanised by the townsfolk? 
This week's BOOK OF THE WEEK is Lloyd Jones's new novel The Cage. 

>> Read Thomas's review. 

>> Jones discusses the book with Gregory O'Brien. 

>> Radio from across the ditch. 

>> Some book club notes!

>> If you're in Wellington on Tuesday 13th, go to the launch at Unity Books. 

>> Jones wrote this book in anger over the ill-treatment and passivity Jones observed directed by ordinary citizens towards Syrian refugees in Hungary. Here are some other books at VOLUME dealing with the refugee crisis: 

Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck (reviewed by Stella)

Charges by Elfreide Jelinek (reviewed by Thomas)

Mediterranean by Armin Greder (a powerful wordless picture book)

Violent Borders: Refugees and the right to move by Reece Jones

Against the Double Blackmail: Refugees, Terror and Other Troubles with the Neighbours by Slavoj Žižek

I Can Only Tell You What My Eyes See by Giles Duley

Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah

Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System by Alexander Betts and Paul Collier

The New Odyssey: A history of Europe's refugee crisis by Patrick Kingsley

Crossing the Sea: With the Syrians on the exodus to Europe by Wolfgang Bauer

The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon

Illegal by Eion Colfer, Andrew Donkin and Giovanni Rigano

The Right to Have Rights by Alastair Hunt, Stephanie DeGooyer, Werner Hamacher, Samuel Moyn and Astra Taylor 

The Quiet War on Asylum by Tracey Barnett