Farrukh Dhondy’s latest novel makes young readers think about big issues—refugees, prejudice, and the power of community. Vinta Nanda discusses the book with the author and reproduces a short excerpt from the book.

In his latest middle-grade novel Freezies, author Farrukh Dhondy tackles the pressing issue of the Syrian refugee crisis through the eyes of three young protagonists navigating prejudice, compassion, and justice in a small British village. Published by Penguin Random House India, the book humanizes global displacement for young readers while resonating with adults alike. Drawing from his personal experiences as a British-Indian immigrant, Dhondy weaves a powerful narrative that reflects on identity, racism, and the transformative power of literature to foster empathy. With characters like Mr Christaki and themes that echo current UK immigration debates, Freezies stands out as an essential read for those invested in children’s literature, refugee stories, and social justice through storytelling.  

When Penguin Random House sent me an email about Freezies, the new novel by Farrukh Dhondy, I knew I had dive deeper to it. Farrukh, my dear friend and one of the most articulate writers of our times, has never shied away from engaging with socio-political themes. Over email, we began a conversation about his new book, and as always, I found his thoughts sharp, provocative, and urgent.

Published under Duckbill, Freezies is set in a quiet English village and revolves around three children—Suleikha, Leo, and Kai—who call themselves the Freezies because they’ve been left out of the school’s popular cliques. When a mysterious van appears on the village green, it leads to the arrival of Mr Christaki, an unkempt but gentle stranger. As fissures grow in the community around whether he should stay, the Freezies forge a bond with him, discovering he’s a gifted musician—and eventually uncovering his dangerous secret. What follows is a bold and risky plan to save their friend from deportation, and perhaps even death.

Set against the backdrop of the Syrian refugee crisis, this book humanizes global displacement through a lens children can relate to—friendship, compassion, and the challenge of doing what’s right when adults seem to get it all wrong.  

The Interview

Vinta Nanda: Freezies addresses the Syrian refugee crisis in a way young readers can understand. What drew you to this subject?

Farrukh Dhondy: The subject of refugees—of people seeking asylum from persecution and war in their native countries—is today a central political preoccupation in Europe and Britain. The problem in the UK—if the influx of thousands of desperate people, and some just seeking a better way of life, is one—manifests itself as scores or even hundreds of men, women, and children crossing the English Channel in rubber dinghies, some of which sink and cause deaths by drowning in the Channel. The last government of Rishi Sunak sloganized his policy as “stop the boats.” He couldn’t.

The policy which his government and his ministers—Suella Braverman and Priti Patel, descendants themselves of immigrant asylum seekers—then sought to implement was to expel these desperate people permanently to Rwanda. While costing the British taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds, it didn’t work. Only one volunteer was so deported.

The ‘immigrant’ and ‘refugee’ question plays on a deep and constant concern and prejudice of a section of the British electorate.

The three young protagonists of my novel The Freezies are dedicated friends of the Syrian refugee, who deceives even them as he pretends to be a Greek Cypriot citizen. The plot demonstrates, I hope, that friendship, gratitude, and compassion triumph over prejudice, which is manifest in the story. Using three young protagonists as the conveyors of this message or theme determined who the primary audience for the novel would be, but of course, I want people of any age and status to read and, perhaps, appreciate it. 

Vinta Nanda: Did your own experience as an immigrant shape the story?

Farrukh Dhondy: I’ve never had a problem with ‘cultural identity’. I grew up till I was twenty in Pune, in Western India, but I read a lot of traditional and then contemporary Brit lit. It didn’t equip me to understand everything about Britain when I came here at the age of twenty on a scholarship to Cambridge University. On my first day at university, I had to see my ‘moral tutor’ who, at our first encounter, asked after offering me a seat, “Dhondy, what will you drink?”

“Oh, anything, Mr. Dewey,” I replied.

He leaned over and in a soft voice said, “Don’t say anything—say dry sherry!”

I got it. “I think I’ll have a dry sherry, Mr. Dewey. Thank you.”

While going to the drinks cabinet, he turned and said, “Dhondy, you are a man of taste!”

As perhaps is the experience of every non-white immigrant to Britain, I encountered some instances of negligible racism and some very serious prejudice. On the Ides of March 1973, I was asleep in my second-floor flat in Brixton above a political bookshop on the ground floor called FREEDOM NEWS, when the building was attacked with a firebomb, forcing me to leap from the burning flat to the debris of burning glass etc., on the pavement below.

I don’t think the incident was singularly in my mind while writing the novel, but certainly the prejudice that the character Mr. Christaki meets was shaped from similar experiences. And yes, just as one met with prejudice, one also met with British common sense, a sense of justice, and of course, friendship and kindness.

Vinta Nanda: What role do you believe literature plays—especially children’s literature—in creating empathy?

Farrukh Dhondy: I absolutely believe that literature, which is the central conversation of all cultures, leads readers to understand other people, the world’s phenomena, and of course, takes them into worlds and dreams outside their hard reality—think Alice, think Harry, even think Superman comics?

This last character, and others like him in epic and modern works (Ramayan, The Odyssey?), are dedicated to some moral rightness—defeating villains and evil. Even agricultural workers called ‘cowboys’ are arbiters and enforcers of right over wrong.

Alice is not quite that—she asks questions about life, her curiosity and the answers to which serve young and old minds: “The question is,” said Alice, “Can you make one word mean so many different things?”

“The question,” said Humpty Dumpty, “is who is to be Master—that is all!”

  

Excerpt from Freezies

Kai’s Story - The Freezies

‘If you’re lying about a lie, are you telling the truth?’—Kai’s dad’s question

The name is Bond—Kai Bond. 008888888 . . .(recurring).

Actually, no it isn’t. It’s Kai Armstrong. And I’m going to start this book, like, write the first chapter, because I pulled the short straw. It wasn’t a straw but a strip of paper held in Sully’s fist.

Sully’s actually Suleikha—one of us three Freezies. The other is Leonard, known as Leo. I can’t shorten the name Kai. I guess I could be called ‘K’, but that could get me mistaken for a girl. I’m going to tell you who we all are, but let me start by telling you what I saw that day while I was walking to school.

As I do every morning, I crossed the common we call the Mead, a big grassy patch on the lower slope of the hill, with all our houses behind it. A path runs round it like the seam on a tennis ball. You start at one place and then go across in a kind of figure eight and come back to the same spot. In early March, when it rains and rains, the path gets muddy.

What I saw there that morning wasn’t there before. It was a battered old American school bus with a trailer attached that had driven off the road and parked in the middle of the Mead.

Cars aren’t allowed on the Mead. So what was this rattletrap doing there?

As I passed it, I heard some music. I peeked in through the trailer window and saw a man playing a violin.

Weird. I was late for school, so I didn’t hang about.

Sul and Leo were waiting for me at the school gate, and the buzzer was just going off.

‘Some geezer’s driven a bus on to the Mead,’ I said. ‘I heard him playing the violin.’

‘Did you have drugs for breakfast?’ Leo asked.

‘Let’s walk there after school,’ I said, ‘and see if it’s still there.’ 

But Leo said his mum would be driving him into Salton for his violin lesson, and Sul said she had to walk into the village to get the keys to her house from her mum, who was at work in the supermarket. 

The three of us make up our group, which we call the Freezies. We call ourselves that to stand out in contrast to the Hotshots, a bunch of bullies who think they’re hotshots. They were started by Jason, one of our classmates. They think they’re so hard.

I was a member of the Hotshots once, but got thrown out. It was just jealousy on account of me scoring more goals than Jason on Sports Day. He started shoving me, saying I fouled him over and over, even though I never did. For revenge I wrote a rap on the Hotshots’ WhatsApp group.

You think you’re a hotshot and pose like a star

But you’re cold as a lolly, you’ll never go far

You’ll melt in your wrapper, coz you’re a real drip

You feel you’re so hard, but you can’t get a grip

They don’t see you’re a loser—the Hotshots are dumb

But that’s what you are, just leftover scum.

The next day in the playground, one of the kids was sent to tell me that I was ‘frozen’, which is what they say when they kick you out of their WhatsApp groups and stuff.

That’s when I teamed up with Leo. He was playing squash against the library wall with a textbook as the bat, and I joined in. We became friends and he asked me why I wasn’t with the Hotshots anymore. I told him and he shrugged.  

Freezies by Farrukh Dhondy is available from Penguin Random House.   

Highly recommended for ages 10+ and adults alike.