"Combining intimate storytelling with investigative journalism, City of Thorns takes us inside Dadaab, the world's biggest and most notorious refugee camp, through the stories of the people who live there. To charity workers, Dadaab refugee camp, where over 350,000 refugees live, is a humanitarian crisis; to the Kenyan government, it's a nursery for terrorists ; to the western media, it's a dangerous no-go area; but to its half a million residents, it is their last resort. Situated hundreds of miles from any other settlement, in the midst of the inhospitable desert of northeast Kenya where only thorn bushes grow, the Dadaab refugee complex was created at the start of the Somali civil war in 1991. Most of the refugees are from Somalia, others are from South Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Dadaab is a city like no other. Its buildings are made from mud and its citizens survive on rations and luck. Over the course of four years, Ben Rawlence became a first-hand witness to a strange and desperate limbo-land, getting to know many of the individuals who have sought sanctuary in the camp. Among them are Guled, a former child soldier who lives for soccer; Nisho, who scrapes together an existence by pushing a wheelbarrow and dreaming of riches; Tawane, the indomitable youth leader; and schoolgirl Kheyro, whose future hangs upon her education. With deep compassion and rare eloquence, Rawlence interweaves the stories of nine individuals to show what life is like in the camp and to sketch the wider political forces that keep the refugees trapped there. An urgent human story with profound international repercussions, brought to life through the people who call Dadaab home. Ben Rawlence is a former researcher for Human Rights Watch in the Horn of Africa"--Provided by publisher.