Jali

The memoir

Jali is Oliver Twist’s account of childhood displacement, family life, and migration from Rwanda through Malawi to Australia. Twist was four when his family fled the aftermath of the 1994 genocide. Penguin’s publication record says the family then spent fourteen years in exile in Malawi before resettling in Australia in 2014.

The book moves between difficult events and ordinary childhood experience rather than presenting life only as a sequence of crises. It also traces Twist’s later work as a writer, actor, and comedian.

From performance to book

The memoir developed from Twist’s one-person stage work of the same name. The term jali refers to a historian, storyteller, poet, or praise singer in West African traditions. The stage work toured before the book was published, and its mixture of memoir, drama, and humour informed the written version.

Penguin Random House Australia published the trade paperback through its Ebury Australia imprint on 1 August 2023. The publisher also released ebook and audiobook editions, with Twist reading the audiobook.

Dzaleka connection

Public Australian sources usually identify the setting only as a refugee camp in Malawi. Dzaleka’s own story and marketplace records identify Twist’s childhood camp with Dzaleka. The book is included here because it records a former resident’s experience of growing up in the camp and the long wait for resettlement, while the distinction between publisher wording and the local identification remains visible in the sources.