The Marsh Birds, by Eva Sallis, is a bleak but poignant account of one boy’s consuming loss and bewilderment as war and internal political tension separate him from his family, his home and his country. It is the story of parallel journeys in the life of Dhurgham Mohammad As-Samarra’i as he grows to manhood in an unforgiving world and searches for love and acceptance. Throughout this pilgrimage, Sallis examines concepts of anguish and hopelessness, social hostility and exclusion, fear of difference and the collision of cultures. In the tradition of Sallis’s City of Sea Lions (2002) and Mahjar (2003), themes of self-discovery, escape, constraint, and the obstacles to freedom and solace in other societies are revisited.