In this Swedish bestseller, a man training to become a Ugandan fighter pilot defects after a coup and spends his life on the run.
“Hypnotic…a sophisticated meditation on politics, race and ethnicity. (…) Anyuru’s prose is incandescent.” —Peter Kimani, The New York Times Book Review

"An extraordinary life in exile inspires a multilayered novel. (...) A deeply moving meditation on identity and history, the personal and the political, blurring the boundaries between truth and fiction." —Kirkus Review

P’s greatest dream is to fly. He sets out to become a Ugandan fighter pilot, training in an academy in Greece. When the 1971 Idi Amin coup in his homeland disrupts his plans, he defects and becomes a man on the run.

In this extraordinary novel based on his own father’s fate, Anyuru evokes P’s struggles in gorgeous, vivid prose. As a refugee, military-camp prisoner, and exile, P never gives up hope and continues to dream of life as a pilot. In a story told across two generations, P searches for identity and purpose in a world in which nowhere is home.