When Evgeny Shtorn flees the rising tide of homophobia and authoritarianism in Putin’s Russia, he leaves behind his home and the life he has spent years building. Arriving at a reception centre on the outskirts of Dublin, he discovers that his journey is far from over. Moving from one direct provision centre to the next, he chronicles the myriad characters he meets – dreamers, survivors, cynics, romantics, opportunists and idealists – all thrown together by circumstance and united by uncertainty.

Through tender gestures, small cruelties, wry jokes and raw moments of vulnerability, a vivid portrait emerges; one of exile and dispossession, but also of humour, connection and friendship. As the banal violence of the system grinds him down, his profound morality, sense of identity, and reserves of empathy all begin to fray. In prose that is taut and utterly compulsive, Shtorn’s first-person chronicler draws us deep into his world, as we wait, dream, fear, fight and sometimes despair alongside him.

Drawn from the diaries Shtorn kept throughout his asylum journey, in a nuanced and polyphonic translation by Alexandra Novitskaya, The Refugee Chronicles is a powerful account of human displacement in twenty-first-century Europe. Part fiction, part memoir, it lifts the veil on the patently absurd and fundamentally flawed system of Direct Provision – a world that is often discussed in the abstract but rarely narrated from within.