S5 Ep. 6: Immigration in Europe: Nadifa Mohamed on Belarus, Brexit, and the EU’s Accelerating Racism Towards Migrants of Color

fiction/non/fiction

Acclaimed novelist Nadifa Mohamed joins hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss the crisis around migrants passing from Belarus into Poland and thus into the E.U. Mohamed analyzes the crisis, engineered by Russian-backed strongman Alexander Lukashenko, in the context of Europe’s historical antipathy toward immigration, and reads from her Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, The Fortune Men, the fictionalized account of a Somali immigrant named Mahmood Mattan, set in Cardiff, Wales during the 1950s. She discusses how attitudes toward immigration shaped Brexit and the U.K.’s draconian new Nationality and Borders Bill, which will potentially affect the lives of around six million people, including the novelist herself.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video excerpts from our interviews at LitHub’s Virtual Book Channel, Fiction/Non/Fiction’s YouTube Channel, and our website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This podcast is produced by Anne Kniggendorf and Hayden Baker.

Selected readings:

Nadifa Mohamed

• The Fortune Men
• The Orchard of Lost Souls
• Black Mamba Boy

Others:

• Bich Minh Nguyen on the Refugee Experience of Holiday Narratives (Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 2, Episode 7)
• This Is Who We Are: Gish Jen and Peter Ho Davies on the Long History of Anti-Asian Racism in the US (Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 4, Episode 14)
• #Families Belong Together: A Conversation with Edwidge Danticat and Cristina Henriquez (Fiction/Non/Fiction Season 1, Episode 20)
• Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman
• The Mahabharata
• Double Dynamite
• Quo Vadis
• The African Queen
• Anger boils as UK Parliament endorses ‘obscene’ nationality bill (Al Jazeera, Dec. 10)
• UK Parliament Business Legislation Parliamentary Bills Nationality and Borders Bill

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