While half the world swept west we trickled eastward one by one single-file like fugitives. Next stop: Abu Dhabi where my father had a job and money for the first time in years . . . __________________________________________________ Flitting from the mud-soaked floors of Venice to the glittering towering constructions of the Abu Dhabi of his childhood and early adulthood from present-day London to North America Andre Naffis-Sahely's bracingly plain-spoken first collection gathers portraits of promised lands and those who go in search of them: labourers travellers dreamers; the hopeful and the dispossessed. 'Naffis-Sahely's poems usher the reader in to a world of reversals and risk . . . His narratives hold memory to account' DAVID HARSENT