![]() ![]() ![]() Luckily for Amir, he runs into Vänna - a local teenage girl who lives with her stern parents. Amir wakes up on the beach scared and alone, his face down in the sand, and runs away from the men who approach him yelling in a language he's never heard before. The only survivor is a nine-year-old Syrian boy named Amir. The bodies of those onboard have been lost at sea, or litter the beach of an unnamed island struggling to cope with the throngs of undocumented migrants who reach its shores with increasing frequency. The Calypso, a small old fishing boat, overloaded with people, has sunk. This book is hard to read because it brings to the page the fear, suffering, language barriers, injustices, and risk of death that come with leaving home for some other hostile place, but it's also a pleasure to read, because hope and kindness light the story in unexpected ways. Omar El Akkad's knows about the cultural, historical, and political forces that drive countless people to migrate illegally, but in What Strange Paradise, he leaves those things aside and focuses instead on telling the stories of the people at the core of the migrant crisis. ![]()
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