Local author, Bronwen Griffiths, came to the Rye Bookshop last Friday to talk about her motivation and sources for writing her latest book Here Casts No Shadow.
Bronwen works with a Syrian refugee group in Hastings. She has travelled widely in Libya and befriended refugees in Sweden, Greece and the UK. Drawing on these experience, she weaves a fictional account of an uprooted Syrian family seeking a home in the West. Interested in her characters’ resulting emotional and psychological development, she juxtaposes the trauma of those fleeing for their lives to the soul-destroying safety of the refugee camps in a neighbouring country, with a looking back after many years when the war is at an end.
Following extract readings from the book, questions were invited from those attending the book launch and these led to an interesting discussion and a raising of awareness to the plight of so many innocent people who are suffering loss as a result of war and displacement.
Photo: Kenneth Bird