Publisher's Synopsis
Unfortunately, this is not only the destiny of Maqsood the imaginary character of the novel, but also the destiny of many people with flesh and blood. Dimitri Verhulst spent a few days in a refugee camp in Belgium to write a report on asylum seekers in 2001 at the request of a literary journal. The Problemski Hotel is an imaginary story based real events. It is a collection of events depicting how life deteriorates when a cigarette box is the most valuable capital, and when visiting a church is to kill the time. Bipul Masli is the unfortunate narrator from Ethiopia, a former photographer, who fled his country after a riot. Longing for a better life, he ends up in a refugee camp in Belgium, where Dimitri Verhulst lives. The author describes vividly the fortunate and less fortunate moments of people who are ordained to the same destiny. Despite the book's painful subject, Verhulst's depiction is filled with satire and comic scenes, although this satire may not often be cheerful, but it is touching. Dimitri Verhulst allows the moments to anchor in his soul enabling him to pen his observations on paper. Not having lived in a cave for years without any access to media, one will certainly know that Verhulst is not an unfamiliar name in the world literature. The reader will immediately see Verhulst's virtuosity at reading this book. Once Aristotle said: "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts" and one can see this in Verhulst's book. The Problemski Hotel consists of 23 sections, each about 4 pages. Although one can read each part independently, the book runs coherently from the beginning to the end, bringing the reader closer to the author and the narrator. In the shortest possible way, Verhulst says much about a terrible life in asylum.
