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From the author of The Ice Walk -

Backpacks and Suitcases

Weaving stories from the time of the Cold War with stories of today’s refugees

The idea for this mini-memoir came to Helen when she was travelling on a train to Romania to interview refugees from Afghanistan and Iraq.

I’ve been here before, she thought, back in Communist times…

And so she takes her readers back to Vienna, from where as a junior reporter in the 1980s she was covering the countries behind the Iron Curtain. Part of her job then involved interviewing defectors, who were fleeing to the West in search of freedom.

Thirty years passed; Helen made her name as a correspondent in Moscow. But her career came full circle when she returned to Central Europe as a mature journalist and met refugees, both from the crisis of 2015 and those fleeing the war in Ukraine.

It’s a story as old as humanity – people on the move seeking sanctuary, encountering settled people with no reason to uproot themselves. The refugees faced a mixed reception and unexpected barriers but for those who had lost everything, there was no turning back.

They risked their lives on boats and came up through the Balkans on foot; they packed onto trains with their backpacks, suitcases, children and pets.

Their luggage was heavy but out of the cases came memories of home and impressions of the road; incredible stories of survival, resilience and hope for the future.