Rabie Borsi, the main protagonist of The Solitude of the Kangaroo, is a member of the Sudanese Tongi, a group of tribes forced to leave their lands and relocate to southern Egypt in the late 1930s. Through his story, and that of others, we discover the plight of a stateless people, unable to control their own destiny, and compelled to forge an identity from the wreckage of bloody ethnic conflict. Isolated and surrounded by kangaroos, symbolic of escape and reflection, Rabie seeks to understand his surroundings, dreaming of an alternative future, even as hope recedes. At the heart of the book lies the question of identity: Rabie is torn between understanding and engaging with reality on one hand, and detachment from it and withdrawal into himself on the other.