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"More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another over-filled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives in their homelands. And only one has made the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials but of Vänna: a teenage girl, native to the island, who lives inside her own sense of homelessness in a place and among people she has come to disdain. And though she and the boy are complete strangers, though they don't speak a common language, she determines to do whatever it takes to save him. In alternating chapters, we learn the story of the boy's life and of how he came to be on the boat; and we follow the girl and boy as they make their way toward a vision of safety. But as the novel unfurls we begin to understand that this is not merely the story of two children finding their way through a hostile world, it is the story of our collective moment in this time: of empathy and indifference, of hope and despair--and of the way each of those things can blind us to reality, or guide us to a better one"--… (more)
User reviews
There are three main characters Amir, a nine year old boy who washes up on a Greek (??)
The story is well told in chapters titled “Before” and “After” and details Amir’s backstory and that of his companions on the old fishing boat “Calypso”. People are from parts of Syria, Eritrea, Lebanon, Palestine looking for any life which is better than the one they are fleeing and they are at the mercy of human traffickers.
Vanna is a kind teenager with parents so unhappy together because of the 2008 economic crisis that she shelters, feeds and protects Amir until he can safely get to a Syrian refugee camp.
Colonel Kethros is disenchanted with his role in this crisis and wonders at the abilities of his new recruits, the constant onslaught of migrants and how to catch Vanna.
This is a thoughtful exploration of the politics of human trafficking, the hope of desperate migrants and the human kindness displayed by a minority of people
Highly recommended.
The book is structured so that chapters headed Before and After alternate, starting with an After chapter. Amir wakes up on a beach and when he sees uniformed men approaching him he takes off into the surrounding woods. He is spotted by a local girl, Vanna, coming out of the woods. Vanna hides him in an outbuilding and then sends the police off in another direction. In the Before chapters we learn that Amir, his mother, his stepfather (also his uncle) and his stepbrother left Syria and found refuge in Alexandria in Egypt. Amir's father and another uncle disappeared when they took part in a demonstration against the Syrian government. Amir learns that his uncle/stepfather has plans to go out late one night and he follows him all the way to the harbour. His uncle gets on board a boat with at least another 100 people of all different nationalities but with the wish to get to Europe and safety in common. Amir follows him to the ship and the gate-keeper lets him board even though his passage has not been pair. There is an implication that Amir will work off his passge in other ways which I took to mean that he would be made a prostitute. Fortunately his uncle comes up with enough money for a passage on the lower deck which he himself takes leaving Amir on the upper deck. The boat that leaves the Alexandrian harbour is soon exchanged for an old fishing boat and all the boat crew return to the original ship. They leave a pair of Eritreans in charge of piloting the ship, with instructions to just keep the compass needle on North. The ride on the boat is horrendous and probably completely accurate. As they get close to the island the boat capsizes and everyone is thrown into the water. On the island the police are trying to put all refugees in a detention centre. The woman in charge of the centre tells Vanna to take Amir to the tip of the island where there will be someone to take Amir to the mainland. On the mainland people from his own country will take him in. So Vanna, only a teenager, takes on the task of getting Amir safely there. The commanding officer, a former soldier who lost part of his leg while on a peace-keeping mission, is determined to catch them.
The author has said in several interviews that he structured the book as a fable. There is a clue to this right on the first page where one of the epigraphs is from Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie: "I taught you to fight and to fly. What more could there be?" Viewed as a retelling of Peter Pan gives this book a whole new meaning for me. Perhaps if I had read those interviews before I finished the book the ending would not have come as such a surprise. Don't say I didn't warn you.
This is the story of Amir Utu, a nine-year-old Syrian boy who arrives on a Greek island where he is pursued by Colonel Dimitri Kethros and helped by a teenaged girl named Vanna. The story is told in alternating sections called Before and After. In the Before story, we learn
The After story starts when the boat has sunk and bodies of refugees wash up on the beach. Amir is the only survivor. Colonel Kethros is charged with handling refugees, which means detaining them in crowded camps. He is determined to capture Amir, even as he becomes increasingly disillusioned about his work. Vanna sees Amir running from the soldiers and hides him. She is determined to get him to safety in an established Muslim community on another island.
The writing is excellent. The author has said in interviews that he modeled the story partly on Peter Pan, and the final chapter. Now, will shock you.
Powerful story of determination, longing for a safe and simple life. A story of when doing right means breaking rules. A story of hope and of despair.
The book which explores the global refugee crisis does not leave the reader unaffected.
While reading this story I could not help think of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, whose body was found washed up on a beach in Turkey back in 2015 having drowned somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea while fleeing Syria. His story made the headlines and the picture of that beautiful
Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise is a story written along those lines. At the onset of the novel we meet Amir Utu, an eight-year-old Syrian refugee - the sole survivor of a shipwrecked boat carrying refugees to the intended destination of the island of Kos. Amir, in a semiconscious state, is found with the bodies of his deceased fellow passengers, washed up on the shores of an island in the Mediterranean. The island is depicted as a vacation destination of choice for international tourists. However, the influx of refugees seeking asylum, shipwrecks and tragedies similar to this one have also attracted much attention in the media.
“Between them, the coast guard and the morgue keep a partial count of the dead, and as of this morning it stands at 1,026 but this number is as much an abstraction as the dead themselves are to the people who live here, to whom all the shipwrecks of the previous year are a single shipwreck, all the bodies a single body.”
The narrative is split across two timelines – generically titled “Before” and “After”. The former traces the events that lead to Amir being washed ashore. We get to know the details of Amir’s family and how he got to be on that boat. We also meet some of his fellow passengers and are privy to their stories and aspirations. While they look for a better life in the West, they are not completely ignorant of the reality of their situation and how they, as refugees, are regarded in a foreign land. In the “After” timeline , we find Amir running from Colonel Dimitri Kethros and his officers who are tasked with rounding up the illegals and processing them through regulated refugee camps, the living conditions in which leave a lot to be desired. While on the run , he ends up near the home of Vanna Hermes, a young girl of fifteen, who takes it upon herself to keep him safe and help him in whatever way possible. Vanna and Amir might not speak the same language but they do communicate with each other through broken words, non-verbal cues, their hearts and humanity. When I say that this is an emotional read, I mean that as a reader you will feel a lot. In my case, I alternated between feelings of anger, frustration, shock and sorrow.
“But you can’t bet your future on work that requires the coming together of people, not now, not with the world the way it is. The days of people coming together are ending; this is a time for coming apart.”
What I found impressive about Omar El Ekkad’s style of writing is that he does not force emotions on the reader. In fact, at times the narrative comes across as factual and detached, especially in the scenes on the boat. The conversations are simply the exchange of dialogue. The events are described just as they happen. The author tells a story and gives the readers space to feel what they need to feel instead of going heavy on melodrama. This is not an entertaining or enjoyable read- the subject matter does not allow it to be. It is, however, hard-hitting and thought-provoking. The prose is straightforward and beautiful and I applaud the author’s restrained tone in narrating a story that revolves around a sensitive, controversial and polarizing issue. I commend the author for humanizing the issue and not overly politicizing it. We see the stark contrasts that define the refugee crisis -brutality and kindness, hope and despair, humanitarianism and political agenda, xenophobia and asylum, cynicism and innocence. The final chapter titled “Now” might change the way you feel about the book but ultimately this is a very well-written and relevant story that will leave a lasting impression.
“You are the temporary object of their fraudulent outrage, their fraudulent grief. They will march the streets on your behalf, they will write to politicians on your behalf, they will cry on your behalf, but you are to them in the end nothing but a hook on which to hang the best possible image of themselves. Today you are the only boy in the world and tomorrow it will be as though you never existed.”
The story of a shipwrecked group of refugees told from the point of view of the child who survived and the girl who helps him. The tale pulls you right along, cheering for Amir and Vanna, wanting them to make it to safety. The casual heartlessness of the tourists in the area who demand to
And then, the last chapter, well, it brings it all home, slaps us upside the head, makes us feel vaguely guilty for enjoying such a story, when the reality is so harsh.
Omar El Akkad is not letting us off with a simple “wow, good book!” Instead he brings a call to action, or for those of us with no power, a wash of regret at our ineptitude. How can we stop this cruelty from happening? How do we step up, be the people we need to be to respect ourselves, to do good, be a force for good?
Thought provoking, and high residue. It will play in my mind for quite a while.
Alternate chapters narrate the story before and after the shipwreck. In the "before" story, Amir inadvertently follows his “Quiet Uncle” Younis aboard a ship smuggling refugees to Europe. Amir ends up with the better-off passengers on the deck, while Younis is forced below decks. Amir gets to know the other people on the ship including the crew of smugglers who know little about operating and maintaining the ship (and charge extra for life vests), as well as other passengers who share their dreams of a better life. In the "after" story, Vänna helps Amir find clothes and food and tries to get him to ship that takes migrants to the safety a mainland refugee camp all the while avoiding the military lead by Colonel Kethros who is determined to catch Amir.
It's a book that's heartbreaking and enraging rooted in contemporary events. The structure of the novel is interesting and I found myself hoping against hope rooting for Amir and Vänna to succeed.
The story then shifts to “Before”, which brings us up to date on how Amir got where he is. We go back and forth between Amir’s before and “After”. Much of after is told from Vanna’s POV, but occasionally we switch to the POV of a colonial who is dead set on finding Amir, the little boy who ran away.
Given that it’s (primarily) from a 9-year old’s POV, it took a bit to figure out what was going on through much of the story. I am still not sure I understand the ending. But it was a “good” (powerful) story, even so.