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Here Casts No Shadow
‘A sudden blast. The ground shaking under our feet. A woman screamed and the crowd surged forward. Instinctively I crouched, taking Pearl with me. It had been a mistake coming here. The president would never allow something like this. Now it was too late.’
Fifteen-year old Mira has grown up in the small town of Zazour. Her country of Lyrian has been under the grip of a ruthless dictator for decades. Mira and her family have always lived a quiet life but everything changes after a protest in town. With Zazour under siege, they are forced to flee to a refugee camp across the border, eventually settling in Neeland, thousands of miles away.
Now, in adult life, as Mira’s father begins to fail in hospital, the secret she and her older brother Kaz have kept for years, threatens to explode - just like the bombs that fell on Zazour - and destroy the life Mira has built for herself.
Fifteen-year old Mira has grown up in the small town of Zazour. Her country of Lyrian has been under the grip of a ruthless dictator for decades. Mira and her family have always lived a quiet life but everything changes after a protest in town. With Zazour under siege, they are forced to flee to a refugee camp across the border, eventually settling in Neeland, thousands of miles away.
Now, in adult life, as Mira’s father begins to fail in hospital, the secret she and her older brother Kaz have kept for years, threatens to explode - just like the bombs that fell on Zazour - and destroy the life Mira has built for herself.
264 pages, Paperback
First published April 10, 2018
8 people want to read
About the author
Bronwen Griffiths
4 books24 followersI am the author of four published books, all published by small, independent publishers.
A Bird in the House (novel) 2014.
Here Casts No Shadow (novel) 2018.
Not Here, Not Us, stories of Syria (flash/short fiction) 2016
Listen with Mother (flash memoir) 2019.
My flash fiction has been widely published. I won the Mselxia flash fiction prize in 2024 and one of my stories was listed in the Wigleaf Top 50, also in 2024.
A Bird in the House (novel) 2014.
Here Casts No Shadow (novel) 2018.
Not Here, Not Us, stories of Syria (flash/short fiction) 2016
Listen with Mother (flash memoir) 2019.
My flash fiction has been widely published. I won the Mselxia flash fiction prize in 2024 and one of my stories was listed in the Wigleaf Top 50, also in 2024.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 4, 2018
A book comes along now and again that lets your heart sing and rejoice about the human spirit.
Here Casts No Shadow is one such book and if it wasn't for the opportunity to obtain an ARC this wonderful story may have passed me by altogether.
I hope no-one reading this review will make a similar mistake. This is a book that is not only worth reading it will give a certain bounce to your life.
Sadly, we are often put off stories of refugees and asylum seekers by the camps in France or the crowds of humanity trekking across Europe. We have often become harden by political rhetoric and fears about immigration and a UK which would be better outside Europe to control our borders.
This book is not 'an in your face' one, liberal treatise of embracing all peoples, it is the fictional account of one family's life in a made-up world where the bombs and suffering are very real.
I guess in taking to refugees and listening to their stories it was not so much what to include but what to leave out for the author. In the process they have woven fact into fiction to produce a telling account of when the first hopes of freedom result in oppression, indiscriminate murder of their own people by a regime that will do anything to maintain power. It is about fear, about bombs dropped by your own government and the decision to flee your home, community and country for a chance to live.
It is about life in a refugee camp; more shortages and a gradual erosion of family life. Finally, it is the final hope of a better place to live and can be yourself and experience a freedom to live in peace and dignity.
The writing is gentle and even paced; initially changing from the horrors of the past to the reality of their new status in a new country. Even when the previous life unravels and death stalks the very shops and streets they inhabit the writing is descriptive but not judgemental - it records events how one might remember them leaving the anxiety and stress to invade one's day dreaming and night terrors.
Both stories; the past and the present start with some joy; the beauty of snow flakes and friendships but in both accounts the initial conflict is seen in its present unfolding and in the damaged lives of those who have survived into their present. Lives are scarred and damaged with PTSD and coping behaviours. Friendships strained and family structures closed and more secretive. Life goes on but we quickly learn that these people are who they are today because of the past. The things they have been seen and done, the lack of justice and accountability that is unlikely to be reconciled.
The two stories are quite harmonious and are cleverly interwoven into events then and now.
The characters are fictional but very real, and are neither heroes nor villains, but human beings with frailties and prone to breakdown.
I liked especially that the book has no political leanings, nor any judgement views. It sees the conflict as a collapse of civilization where any death on all sides is a loss, the loss of a child, parent or loved one.
I had not heard of the author previously but I feel blessed to have stumbled across this book.
Here Casts No Shadow is one such book and if it wasn't for the opportunity to obtain an ARC this wonderful story may have passed me by altogether.
I hope no-one reading this review will make a similar mistake. This is a book that is not only worth reading it will give a certain bounce to your life.
Sadly, we are often put off stories of refugees and asylum seekers by the camps in France or the crowds of humanity trekking across Europe. We have often become harden by political rhetoric and fears about immigration and a UK which would be better outside Europe to control our borders.
This book is not 'an in your face' one, liberal treatise of embracing all peoples, it is the fictional account of one family's life in a made-up world where the bombs and suffering are very real.
I guess in taking to refugees and listening to their stories it was not so much what to include but what to leave out for the author. In the process they have woven fact into fiction to produce a telling account of when the first hopes of freedom result in oppression, indiscriminate murder of their own people by a regime that will do anything to maintain power. It is about fear, about bombs dropped by your own government and the decision to flee your home, community and country for a chance to live.
It is about life in a refugee camp; more shortages and a gradual erosion of family life. Finally, it is the final hope of a better place to live and can be yourself and experience a freedom to live in peace and dignity.
The writing is gentle and even paced; initially changing from the horrors of the past to the reality of their new status in a new country. Even when the previous life unravels and death stalks the very shops and streets they inhabit the writing is descriptive but not judgemental - it records events how one might remember them leaving the anxiety and stress to invade one's day dreaming and night terrors.
Both stories; the past and the present start with some joy; the beauty of snow flakes and friendships but in both accounts the initial conflict is seen in its present unfolding and in the damaged lives of those who have survived into their present. Lives are scarred and damaged with PTSD and coping behaviours. Friendships strained and family structures closed and more secretive. Life goes on but we quickly learn that these people are who they are today because of the past. The things they have been seen and done, the lack of justice and accountability that is unlikely to be reconciled.
The two stories are quite harmonious and are cleverly interwoven into events then and now.
The characters are fictional but very real, and are neither heroes nor villains, but human beings with frailties and prone to breakdown.
I liked especially that the book has no political leanings, nor any judgement views. It sees the conflict as a collapse of civilization where any death on all sides is a loss, the loss of a child, parent or loved one.
I had not heard of the author previously but I feel blessed to have stumbled across this book.
January 21, 2020
Bronwen Griffiths has given us a novel about war, terror, forced migration, refugees and safety in a new land. The story centers around one family, mother, father, son, daughters and a baby boy. The setting may have been Dara'a when the blood-letting began in Syria. It is said that unarmed civilians started the revolution, Bashar alAssad started the war against them. Griffiths adopts a gentle, non-judgmental style, preferring to tell her story through the people most affected by the war, how they coped, how the dangers around them increased as their abilities to sustain life decreased. It is agreed among them that their only option is to pay a smuggler to get them out of the country and on to a boat destined, they all hope, for safe havens. Without dwelling on what must have been perilous travels, the family eventually arrives in a city that may or may not be in Sweden. Mira, the narrator, works in an organization set up to help refugees. Pearl has married a lawyer and lives in comfort with him and their two boys. Baby Moe is a medical man in the U S, while the eldest son, Kaz, lives in Australia, apparently having become sober after years of alcoholism. The redoubtable mother has already died in her safe new home, the paterfamilias is dying in the local hospital. The family tries to get out from under the shadows of their former lives, in order to come together as a unit to be with their father before he dies. This novel is full of humanity and the love between the family members, strained though the "quality of mercy" may have been at times. Highly recommended. A very attractive story that is sad, but is redeemed by the fact that this one family escaped terror and survived to go on and live productive lives.
July 15, 2018
After years of hearing about refugees, I was starting to feel numb. This book took some of that numbness away. It’s also a great read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews