Review
Shadow Behind the Sun is published by the Highland based publisher Sandstone Press. It is an enthralling read. The refugees lack of a voice means that not only is their experience in the UK largely unheard and misunderstood. The experiences which drove them to come here are also lost to most of us. Remzije Sherifi devotes large sections of Shadow Behind the Sun to her life and work with other immigrants in Scotland. But the most moving and intriguing sections of her well-written and carefully assembled story deal with this former journalist s life as an Albanian woman in Yugoslavia and then, unluckily, in Greater Serbia. --Roger Hutchison in The Scotsman
DARK horrors lurk behind Remzije Sherifi s bright smile. Sitting behind her desk at the Maryhill Integration Network in Glasgow she exudes happiness and optimism despite the fact the memory of all she has lost is with her every day. Remzije grew up in Gjilan in the south-east of Kosovo. She completed an HND in electrical engineering and education in Prishtina before training as a radio journalist. She worked hard to make her way in the industry, eventually becoming editor of Radio Gjilan. However, during the 1990s Remzije had her job taken away from her as Serbia attempted to suppress thousands of ethnic Albanians living in Kosovo. It was a huge blow, but there was more trouble looming. In the late 1990s, forces under Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic attempted to overpower the Albanian majority s campaign for independence. A conflict followed, during which time Serbian forces carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Serbian tanks Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro. Among them were Remzije and her family. --Sunday Post
Shadow Behind The Sun is perhaps the first substantial book to emerge from the wave of new Scots who have arrived here in the last decade from war zones across the world - from Iraq and Afghanistan. from Sudan and Zimbabwe, and of course from former Yugoslavia, in this case from Kosova. In this book, written with the help of Robert Davidson of Sandstone Press, Remzije Sherifi intercuts her story of the conflict in Kosova - the history of the region, the conflict which developed in the 1990 s, and the reasons why she and her family finally had to leave - with her experiences today, working as an adviser to other refugees and asylum seekers in a drop-in centre in Glasgow. And between these two poles of experience, she produces a remarkable memoir. It s an angry book, but also a profoundly thoughtful one about the way in which this kind of ethnic conflict can flare up within months, or a few short years, in what previously seemed a peaceful and harmonious society, and about her experience of working with others who have faced similar crises. Sherifi is a woman younger than me, who has already seen more suffering and trauma than anyone should have to see in a lifetime. But she is still learning, growing and changing here in Scotland, building a new life which is not the same as the old one, but which still brings new challenges and fulfilments. And while there is never any room for complacency on these issues, I think that s something in which we can take some small amount of pride. --Joyce McMillan at the Saltire Society Awards
DARK horrors lurk behind Remzije Sherifi s bright smile. Sitting behind her desk at the Maryhill Integration Network in Glasgow she exudes happiness and optimism despite the fact the memory of all she has lost is with her every day. Remzije grew up in Gjilan in the south-east of Kosovo. She completed an HND in electrical engineering and education in Prishtina before training as a radio journalist. She worked hard to make her way in the industry, eventually becoming editor of Radio Gjilan. However, during the 1990s Remzije had her job taken away from her as Serbia attempted to suppress thousands of ethnic Albanians living in Kosovo. It was a huge blow, but there was more trouble looming. In the late 1990s, forces under Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic attempted to overpower the Albanian majority s campaign for independence. A conflict followed, during which time Serbian forces carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Serbian tanks Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro. Among them were Remzije and her family. --Sunday Post
Shadow Behind The Sun is perhaps the first substantial book to emerge from the wave of new Scots who have arrived here in the last decade from war zones across the world - from Iraq and Afghanistan. from Sudan and Zimbabwe, and of course from former Yugoslavia, in this case from Kosova. In this book, written with the help of Robert Davidson of Sandstone Press, Remzije Sherifi intercuts her story of the conflict in Kosova - the history of the region, the conflict which developed in the 1990 s, and the reasons why she and her family finally had to leave - with her experiences today, working as an adviser to other refugees and asylum seekers in a drop-in centre in Glasgow. And between these two poles of experience, she produces a remarkable memoir. It s an angry book, but also a profoundly thoughtful one about the way in which this kind of ethnic conflict can flare up within months, or a few short years, in what previously seemed a peaceful and harmonious society, and about her experience of working with others who have faced similar crises. Sherifi is a woman younger than me, who has already seen more suffering and trauma than anyone should have to see in a lifetime. But she is still learning, growing and changing here in Scotland, building a new life which is not the same as the old one, but which still brings new challenges and fulfilments. And while there is never any room for complacency on these issues, I think that s something in which we can take some small amount of pride. --Joyce McMillan at the Saltire Society Awards
Product Description
In this dramatic and personal account Remzije Sherifi integrates the two great themes of her life by joining her family and people s history with the story of her work with asylum seekers in Britain. Her view of the Kosova atrocities will surprise many as she places it at the culmination of a long persecution, and the persecutions within a longer history still. Integration and the failure of integration are motifs throughout this book, often appearing when they are least expected. Shadows cross the face of the earth as we read, and more individuals and families are displaced than ever before. In a radiant closure Remzije Sherifi warns of dangers to come and urges us towards awareness and generosity. The body of the book contains direct interviews with asylum seekers describing the conditions in which they live, thus placing the individual human being and the family at the heart of the tragedy. In appendices it also contains interviews with Dr Elinor Kelly and Janet Andrews, Secretary of the Maryhill Integration Network, and with Nick Hopkins, its co-founder.
About the Author
Remzije Sherifi was for many years a broadcast journalist with Radio Gjilan in Kosova. She came to Great Britain with her family in 1999 as part of the humanitarian evacuation of refugees fleeing Serbian paramilitary forces. For health reasons she remains in the City of Glasgow but is in regular contact with family and other journalists who have returned. She now works as Development Officer for the Maryhill Integration Network, part of a UK wide network of organisations focussing on Asylum Seekers, their plight and their place in British society.
