Antigona and Me, By Kate Clanchy

One morning, a privileged North London writer, Kate Clanchy, chances upon a Kosovan refugee called Antigona. The former offers the latter a job as a cleaner on impulse. So begins a moving friendship that results in this journal of Antigona's escape from her wartorn homeland, domestic torture and alien status in Britain.

Clanchy apologetically describes Antigona as her servant, but her book is more than an exercise in absolving middle-class guilt. The women develop a most unlikely friendship of equals, touchingly told.