When Evgeny Shtorn flees the rising tide of homophobia and authoritarianism in Putin’s Russia, he leaves behind his home and the life he has spent years building. Arriving at a reception centre on the outskirts of Dublin, he discovers that his journey is far from over.
This is a staggering piece of literature.
Stephen Rea
Moving from one direct provision centre to the next, he chronicles the myriad characters he meets – dreamers, survivors, cynics, romantics, opportunists and idealists – all thrown together by circumstance and united by uncertainty. Through tender gestures, small cruelties, wry jokes and raw moments of vulnerability, a vivid portrait emerges; one of exile and dispossession, but also of humour, connection and friendship.
As the banal violence of the system grinds him down, his profound morality, sense of identity, and reserves of empathy all begin to fray. In prose that is taut and utterly compulsive, Shtorn’s first-person chronicler draws us deep into his world, as we wait, dream, fear, fight and sometimes despair alongside him.
Drawn from the diaries Shtorn kept throughout his asylum journey, in a nuanced and polyphonic translation by Alexandra Novitskaya, The Refugee Chronicles is a powerful account of human displacement in twenty-first-century Europe. Part fiction, part memoir, it lifts the veil on the patently absurd and fundamentally flawed system of Direct Provision – a world that is often discussed in the abstract but rarely narrated from within.
Praise for The Refugee Chronicles
This is a staggering piece of literature. Providing insight and understanding to anyone who remains outside the experience, who hopes to dismiss those who suffer as intruders and foreigners, rather than as deeply human people struggling to make sense of an impossible situation.
Stephen Rea
Immersive, polyvocal and fraught with the tensions of lives lived in confinement, The Refugee Chronicles tackles the Irish system of direct provision, in all its cruelty and absurdity. Evgeny Shtorn invokes the pressures, sadnesses and small joys of community with real literary flair. Redolent of the works of Solzhenitsyn in its chronicling of dehumanising systems, this is a book that everyone should read.
Jessica Traynor
Evgeny Shtorn writes with the insight of an activist, the curiosity of an academic and the imagination of an artist. Throughout The Refugee Chronicles, a deeply necessary dark humour runs alongside compassion and moral clarity. This is both a powerful account of seeking refuge and a profoundly human portrait of the people who inhabit Europe’s asylum systems. It deserves to be widely read.
Dr. Michael Barron
In the powder keg of Direct Provision centres, Shtorn weaves an intricate story of geopolitical tensions, friendship, heartbreak, betrayal, collapse, resilience, and camaraderie. His writing defies sensationalist generalisations by reminding us that no one human can represent a country, a continent, a religion or a race, and that the ‘good immigrant’ is a mask that nobody should be forced to wear. The characters are messy and flawed, forcing the reader to face uncomfortable truths, to question their own assumptions and prejudices against asylum seekers, to understand the broken system all these lives are trapped in. An important story and a healthy reminder that there is a very big world out there, even when crammed into a single building.
Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan
The Refugee Chronicles burrows under the skin of Ireland’s Direct Provision system and spares us nothing of the rot it finds beneath. Evgeny Shtorn has a keen eye for the frailty, hypocrisy and moral complexity that constitute our humanity, and there is also warmth, solidarity, an irreverent sense of humour. But none of this distracts from his utter indignation on behalf of his fellow asylum seekers and contempt for the system(s) – Ireland is far from alone on this – that keep them from so many things; above all, from living. Alexandra Novitskaya’s translation welcomes Shtorn’s narrative into English with the care, empathy and attentiveness so frequently denied to the book’s protagonists.
Robin Munby
Evgeny Shtorn
Evgeny Shtorn is an Irish Russophone writer, activist, and researcher. He left Russia in 2018 due to his civil society work and was granted international protection in Ireland in 2019. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Helsinki, where his research examines violence against LGBTIQ+ people in Russia. His work focuses on confronting authoritarian governance, analysing its effects on civil society, and supporting human rights work on the ground. In parallel, he develops autoethnographic writing grounded in lived experience, bridging research, advocacy, and narrative practice. He also collaborates with international partners on initiatives supporting human rights defenders at risk.
Alexandra Novitskaya
Alexandra Novitskaya was born in Leningrad, USSR, just before the latter collapsed and the former became St. Petersburg – where she grew up and which she left in the early 2010s. She has been calling the United States her home ever since, and currently lives between Brooklyn and Baltimore, where she is a Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. A PhD in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Novitskaya has published articles, book chapters, and blog posts for both academic and non-academic readers. The Refugee Chronicles is her first literary translation.
