Life in Limbo

In the novel The Gurugu Pledge African refugees, all escaping their own personal trials, are stuck in a small enclave on Mount Gurugu in Morocco with hopes of making it to Europe. Their plight reflects Equatorial Guinean author Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel’s own current state – having been forced out of Equatorial Guinea after a hunger strike to protest the regime, seeking refuge in Spain, the former coloniser of his native land. 

Ávila Laurel, in conversation with the journalist Helene Hovden Hareide, reflects on the first-hand accounts that influenced his novel and his own personal history about being a person stuck in Limbo.