The Tale of Ahmed

In deceptively simple verse, accompanied by his own distinctive artwork, Henry Cockburn succeeds in evoking the ordeal that millions today endure unseen-the hope and horror of the refugee experience. -Anthony Summers, Pulitzer Prize Finalist and author of The Eleventh Day Henry Cockburn has created a work that is vivid, haunting and a call to conscience. His gifts as a story teller and artist shine throughout. So too does his humanity. A book to treasure. -Fergal Keane, foreign correspondent with BBC News Tale of Ahmed is a tremendous feat of imagination and empathy, a large-scale response to the plight of modern-day migrants fleeing their homelands through necessity. Sustained inventive rhyming and poetic craft underpin the picaresque adventures of the young Afghan, Ahmed. He experiences the trials of dealing with mercenary people-smugglers and hard-hearted border guards along with the thrill of meeting new companions and benefiting from their wisdom and their friendship. Cockburn intersperses his involving tale with passages of myth and fantasy but always returns the reader to the often brutal, always hazardous, sometimes redemptive, reality of migration. -Derek Sellen, poet Tale of Ahmed is an extraordinary achievement of compassion by a young poet and artist. Henry Cockburn's uncanny ability to rhyme complex events in the life of refugees escaping Afghanistan for a better world rings true to my own terrifying experience of escape: the sense of dread at night among strangers, the hunger and degradation after months on the road walking, hiding, waiting...Henry Cockburn's narrative poem must surely be the break-out attempt to bring us into the imaginative world of the refugee. -Atiqullah Khan, former asylum seeker