What We Leave We Carry: Voices of Migration to Britain

Colin Grant author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Publishing:4th Jun '26

£22.00

This title is due to be published on 4th June, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

What We Leave We Carry: Voices of Migration to Britain cover

What do we leave behind when we move to a new place – and what do we carry with us, physically and emotionally, wherever we land?

Here are the voices of people who have come to Britain to make a new life: a Czech-Roma lawyer in Reading, an Iranian taxi driver in Shropshire, a Sierra Leonean actor in Northampton, a Romanian police officer in Edinburgh.

Colin Grant has travelled the country and listened to their stories – foundational tales of arriving in a new land, along with rarely spoken stories of love and loss. Together, these accounts ask questions about assimilation, identity, belonging and the emotional cost of migration in twenty-first-century Britain.

Candid, profoundly human, sometimes funny and always moving, What We Leave We Carry is a chance to listen to Britain – in all its richness and complexity.

PRAISE FOR HOMECOMING by COLIN GRANT:

'Oral history at its finest' Daily Mail
'Prickles with beautiful, comic and brutal details' Observer
'An extraordinary and compelling book' Daily Telegraph
'Utterly fascinating' New Statesman
'A hopeful, angry, tear-jerking read'Grazia
'Essential reading' Guardian

A powerful antidote to the false binaries of what does and doesn't make a British citizen. A real example of literature that meets the moment... Thankfully, voices like the ones gathered in What We Leave We Carry exist to offer an expansive clearer eyed path to understanding ourselves, others and the "othered" -- Raymond Antrobus

ISBN: 9781787333161

Dimensions: 240mm x 156mm x 40mm

Weight: 750g

336 pages