Outside in World | Browse Books

Use our Book Finder to search for books by Title (or part of the title), Author, ISBN, Age Range, Keyword, or Continent/Country. Then simply click the magnifying glass to start your search.

If a title starts with 'The', leave this out as this is added to the end of the title in brackets. funny pictures funny images funny photos really funny pictures

‘We need the literature of other countries to expand our
horizons and stimulate our ideas. Without it, we are not only
diminished, we are starved’
(The Times, Magnus Linklater 29/06/05)

Please email us to sign up to our Newsletter

Title: Me, In Between

Author: Julya Rabinowich

Translator: Claire Storey

Illustrator:

Publisher: Andersen Press

Date Published: 2022

Format: Paperback

Genre:

Book Category: Fiction

Age Range: 14+

Original Title: First published in German as Dazwischen: Ich, Carl Hanser Verlag, Germany, 2016

Country of Origin: Germany

Me, In Between

by Julya Rabinowich
Age Range: 14+

Narrated by fifteen-year-old Madina, this is a deeply moving and observant novel about her life as a refugee living with her mum, dad, seven-year-old brother Rami and aunt Amina in an overcrowded hostel in Austria while they wait for their request for asylum to be processed. We are not told where her family come from or what war they are fleeing. The opening page tells us “Where do I come from? That doesn’t matter. It could be anywhere.” Apart from a single mention of Madina being asked to wear the hijab by her father and references to how important traditional values are her culture or religion are not referred to specifically.

Russian-born Austrian author, playwright, painter and translator Julya Rabinowich’s story sharply contrasts the two worlds that Madina inhabits. She wants to embrace her new life learning German and being the family interpreter, making friends, working hard at school and enjoying some of the Western freedoms that she would not have experienced at home. At the same time, she has to be mindful of her proud conservative father who is steeped in tradition and cannot adapt to their new life, refusing even to learn the language. This inevitably leads to clashes – such as not being allowed to sleep over at her best friend Laura’s or go to her birthday party unless Rami accompanies her as the next male relative despite the fact, he is only seven years old. As a widening gulf between them starts to grow and they cease to understand one another, Madina has to walk a fine line between the two but when her Dad’s actions put the family’s asylum application in jeopardy, she feels she has no choice but to act to protect their new life.

Madina records day-to-day life in her diary – often in quite short and succinct paragraphs which are eloquently translated by Claire Storey. As she weaves between her past and present life together with her frighteningly vivid dreams that release the horrors of her past it makes for an extremely powerful and universal story, especially relevant today. Madina, like many thousands of young people, finds herself torn between two different cultures but ultimately has to decide her own life and future.

Rabinowich was born in 1970 in Leningrad, (now Saint Petersburg, Russia). In 1977 her family emigrated to Vienna and since 2006, Rabinowich has worked as an interpreter for refugees at centres in Vienna that are engaged in welcoming, aiding and integrating asylum seekers, refugees and migrants to Austria.

In an interview with the New York Times (2019), Rabinowich was asked if she had used her personal experience as a refugee from Soviet Russia to inspire Madina’s story. She replied that she “wanted young people to know about war and all of the grim consequences this impacts on the survivors- because I was developing the feeling, that this knowledge is getting lost” She also wanted to reach out to those who had suffered war and fled to a new country – “I did use my experiences as a translator, not so much those of my own uprooting.”

Me, In Between won the Friedrich Gerstäcker Prize and the Austrian Young People’s Book Prize.

buy now from amazon