The Game: A Novel

A powerful contemporary literary novel about migration, debt, family sacrifice and the dangerous journey from Bangladesh to Italy.

In a room above a kebab shop on Via Casilina, in south-east Rome, Shafiq begins writing to his younger sister Maya.

Three weeks earlier, a letter reached him from their village in Madaripur. The man in the clean white shirt has returned to the courtyard. He has brought the old promise with him: Europe, work, money, a way out. Shafiq knows what that promise costs because he has already paid it with his body, his voice, his father’s land and the silence that followed.

Before Rome, there was Char Boitka, a river-island on the lower Padma, where land shifts, debts grow and families learn to measure hope in decimals. There was his father’s diabetes, his mother’s tired refusal, his sister’s schoolbooks, the green notebook, the village broker, the Body Contract, the Guarantor signature and the figure that made leaving feel like duty.

Then came the route: Shahjalal, Dubai, Benghazi, the compound, the bedbugs, the bottle, the skin, Zuwara Beach, the hold, the second day at sea, Lampedusa, the hotspot, the train, the asylum interview, Termini, Tor Pignattara and the long attempt to remain human after being turned into passage, payment and risk.

Written with restraint, compassion and moral force, The Game is a contemporary literary novel about migration, smuggling, poverty, faith, family, borders, memory and the lives carried across water in the hope of arriving somewhere safer.

The sea keeps no record. We must.