Two Blankets, Three Sheets

Two Blankets, Three Sheetsdoes for the beleaguered political asylum seeker stuck in legal limbo what Joseph HellersCatch-22did for the hapless soldier trapped in a military at warTranslated from the Dutch into nimble and conversational English by Jonathan Reederit is a tale for and of our time.Rayyan Al-Shawaf,Los Angeles Review of BooksBased on the authors true story, this is the account of Iraqi refugee Samir, who spends nine years in an asylum center in the Netherlands.Amsterdam Airport, 1998. Samir Karim steps off a plane from Vietnam, flushes his fake passport down the toilet, and requests asylum. Fleeing Iraq to avoid conscription into Saddam Husseins army, he has spent seven years anonymously wandering through Asia. Now, safely in the heart of Europe, he is sent to an asylum center and assigned a bed in a shared dormwhere he will spend the next nine years. As he navigates his way around the absurdities of Dutch bureaucracy, Samir tries his best to get along with his 500 new housemates. Told with compassion and a unique sense of humor, this is an inspiring tale of survival, a close-up view of the hidden world of refugees and human smugglers, and a sobering reflection of our times.