"My name is Saad, Saad, which in Arabic means 'hope, hope,' and in English, 'sorrow, sorrow.'" Saad longed to leave Baghdad, to escape the chaos that had engulfed it, to reach Europe, freedom, a future. How could he leave his country with no money? How, like Odysseus, did he face the storms and survive drowning, escape the opium smugglers, ignore the songs of courtesans who had grown hard-hearted, slip past a cruel, one-eyed jailer, or resist the allure and captivating charm of a Sicilian woman? And so began Saad's journey, a violent, comical, tragic adventure with no return. Through conversations with a seemingly perfect, loving father, this novel recounts the mass exodus of millions of people today, searching for a place on Earth: illegal immigration. Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's captivating and engaging narrative, *The Brotherly Witness*, is an epic that realistically and meticulously depicts the lives of the lower classes and the injustices they suffer in our time, exploring the human condition. Are borders the stronghold of our passions or the shield of our illusions?