Writing young refugees in contemporary English fiction: Chris Cleave's The Other Hand

his article seeks to explore the representation of a young refugee as a fictional character in The Other Hand by Chris Cleave, a novel that elaborates on the fragile condition of its main character, a girl displaced by war and terror who seeks to get permission to stay in England. The novel tries on the one hand, to give voice to Little Bee’s anguish during her internment in a detention centre first and throughout her subsequent struggle with the authorities, while on the other it also seeks to detail her process of gradual adaptation, and celebrate the character’s resilience and desire to reinvent herself in her new context. By discussing the inhospitable space of the detention centre and contrasting it with the tentative creation of spaces of hospitality in the novel, the article suggests that The Other Hand offers a composite portrayal of a young refugee character that manages to restore her individuality and humanity