Fabien Toulmé – författare

A remarkable recounting of a human journey through an inhumane world.What does it mean to be a “refugee”? It is easy for those who live in relative freedom to ignore or even to villainize people who have been forced to flee their homes. After all, it can be hard to identify with others’ experiences when you haven’t been in their shoes.In Hakim’s Odyssey, we see firsthand how war can make anyone a refugee. Hakim, a successful young Syrian who had his whole life ahead of him, tells his story: how war forced him to leave everything behind, including his family, his friends, his home, and his business. After the Syrian uprising in 2011, Hakim was arrested and tortured, his town was bombed, his business was seized by the army, and members of his family were arrested or disappeared. This first leg of his odyssey follows Hakim as he travels from Syria to Lebanon, Lebanon to Jordan, and Jordan to Turkey, where he struggles to earn a living and dreams of one day returning to his home.This graphic novel is necessary reading for our time. Alternately hopeful and heartbreaking, Hakim’s Odyssey is a story about what it means to be human in a world that sometimes fails to be humane.

What choices would you make to reunite your family?“You know, Haidi, we’re going on a trip. A really big trip to find our way to Mama.”In exile and far from his homeland, Hakim finds a bit of hope in the birth of his son. But between unstable jobs and selling what he can in the streets, it’s hard to survive—and impossible for the family to stay together. Reluctantly separated from the woman he loves and alone with his child, Hakim will have to overcome incredible odds and seemingly impossible obstacles to reunite his family, which leads him to make the most difficult decision of his life.Captivating and deeply moving, this second book of the critically acclaimed Hakim’s Odyssey follows the true story of a Syrian refugee as he tries to find his way in Turkey and then makes the perilous trek to what he hopes will be a more settled life in Europe.

The end of a journey, the beginning of a new life.—I’m Syrian, and I got here from Turkey.—Whoaaa! That’s a hell of a trip!—You could say that . . . I left home almost three years ago.After being rescued from the Mediterranean, Hakim and his son reach European soil, full of hope. But before they can get to France, they face a new series of challenges: overcrowded detention centers, run-ins with border police, and a persistent xenophobia that seems to follow them almost everywhere they go. Will Hakim’s determination and the kindness of strangers be enough to carry him to the end of his journey and reunite his family?By turns heart-warming and heart-wrenching, this final installment in the Hakim’s Odyssey trilogy follows Hakim and his son as they make their way from Macedonia to the south of France. Based on true events, it lays bare the tremendous effects that the policies of wealthy countries and the attitudes of their people have on the lives of the displaced and dispossessed.