Shining: The Story of a Lucky Man (Abdi Aden & Robert Hillman, HarperCollins)

A powerful, uplifting memoir, Shining is the story of one man’s dogged optimism in the face of hardship, horror and the struggle to survive against truly appalling odds. At age 13 Abdi was forced, like thousands of his countrymen, to flee Somalia when cut-throat civil war erupted. His parents were absent and he trekked, with 300 others, to Kenya. So rugged were the conditions and so pitiless and brutal were the soldiers on both sides of the war that only five of the group survived. Stealthily making his way back to Mogadishu in a fruitless quest to find his family, he then escaped to Romania, to Germany, then to Melbourne, arriving as a penniless 15-year-old with no English, family or support. Yet, through sheer determination and optimism, Abdi survived and prospered, gaining an education, becoming a youth worker and receiving awards for his work, as well as featuring in SBS’ second series of ‘Go Back to Where You Came From’. In his own words: ‘I have the hunger for life of a man who has escaped a bullet through the head a dozen times.’ Anyone who has ever said ‘it couldn’t have been that bad’ should read this book.

Max Oliver is a retired Australian bookseller