Zoltán Böszörményi begins THE REFUGEE with his harrowing escape from the threat of imprisonment in an Eastern European dictatorship to devote the rest of the book to his equally adventurous detention in a refugee camp in Western Europe, taking the reader beyond the TV news images to give an inside look into the everyday life of a community of desperate people lacking in community spirit. The author unflinchingly describes what it is like living without legal status or civil rights in crowded, noisy and sometimes existentially dangerous dormitories, hanging on to the hope of finding acceptance in a peaceful country. The author’s problems at home arose from a volume of his poetry; it’s only natural that he should tell his story as a poet, in a novelistic, creative nonfiction style, the only way it can be given an authentic voice that can speak about feelings beyond facts.