Hamid & Shakespeare
The tragi-comic journey of a refugee
Hamid & Shakespeare is a debut graphic novel by a former Calais jungle refugee imagining a friendship between a refugee arriving in London today and the nation’s most famous playwright
A chance spotting from the back of a refrigerated lorry of a poster marking Shakespeare’s 400th birthday spurs a refugee’s imagination to transport himself from his detention cell to a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at London’s Globe Theatre. As we move between the 21st and 17th centuries, Shakespeare introduces Hamid both to a promised new land, and to a series of well known plays through which Hamid tells his own experiences: of interrogation, of his journey from home: crossing the sea, getting lost in the forest, his months spent in the Calais Jungle refugee camp, and his arrival in the UK in the back of a refrigerated lorry. In turn, Shakespeare teaches Hamid how to speak English and how to behave as he navigates the London Underground, and gives him a helping hand at the Home Office.
The book is created in collaboration with award-winning theatre company Good Chance who have worked with Adin since meeting him in their pop-up dome in the Calais Jungle.
Majid Adin is an Iranian artist and animator, who arrived in the UK in a refrigerated truck in 2016. Ten years earlier, an occasional blog he wrote upset the regime in Iran, and he was forced into political exile from Tehran following a brief imprisonment. It was only ten years later that he took up the pen again, as a refugee in the Calais jungle. He lives in West Hampstead.
