Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits: Reconstruct your perception of borders, migration and culture.

Laila Lalami reclaims the voices of Moroccan migrants that travel the fourteen kilometers that separates Morocco from Spain, wealth from poverty, and opportunity from grim reality.

Not only is this novel gracefully written, but it describes the complexities of culture, the legacy of colonial history, and renegotiates the conceptions surrounding immigration by giving the migrants voices, histories and bodies. For a slim novel, under 200 pages, the content is surprisingly heavy. Through the points of view of Murad, Halima, Aziz, and Faten we recognise the hopes and struggles of these individuals as they seek to escape their circumstances. The crossing comes to signify not only hope, but survival.

Murad is a member of the unemployed despite his English diploma. Halima is trapped by her husband and her mother's beliefs about women's roles. Aziz wants to build a life and career with his wife. Faten inhabits the role of the rebel, and suffers the consequences. Each embarks on the journey for their families, for jobs, and for freedom. Some make it, and others don't, but the fourteen kilometers changes their lives.

Four different lives intertwine in this seminal text. This book invites us to adjust our assumptions on migrants and provides us with a timely insight into their lives.

"instead of a fleet, here we are in an inflatable boat - not just Moors, but a motley mix of people from the ex-colonies, without guns or armour, without a charismatic leader" (3).