Morpurgo pens refugee tale inspired by Jonathan Swift

HarperCollins Children’s Books will this autumn publish a Michael Morpurgo book about a refugee from Afghanistan, inspired by Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. 

Boy Giant: Son of Gulliver is about Omar, a 12-year-old boy who flees his home to try and find his uncle in the UK but ends up on the island of Lilliput. 

Morpurgo said: “Omar, a young refugee from Afghanistan, is washed up half-dead on the shores of Lilliput, where he finds himself a giant amongst all the little Lilliputians who find him and care for him. They think he is Gulliver, a hero to all of them, because they all know the story of how Gulliver saved Lilliput hundreds of years before. It is an island paradise where kindness and goodwill rule, where strangers are welcomed in. But, as Omar will discover, it is a paradise under threat.”

HarperCollins Children’s Books will publish Boy Giant in hardback, e-book and audiobook on 19th September.