Zoltán Böszörményi begins THE REFUGEE with his harrowing escape from the threat of imprisonment in an Eastern European dictatorship but devotes the bulk of the book to his equally adventurous detention in a Western European refugee camp, taking the reader beyond the TV news images to give an inside look into the everyday life of a community of desperate people facing uncertain future. The author unflinchingly describes what it is like living without legal status and civil rights in crowded, noisy and sometimes existentially dangerous dormitories, hanging on to the hope of finding acceptance in a peaceful country.