Cast Away
True Stories of Survival from Europes Refugee Crisis
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- USD 17.99
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- USD 17.99
Descripción editorial
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence 2017
“Galvanizing and deeply compassionate.”
—O Magazine
From Time magazine's European Union correspondent, a powerful exploration of the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean, told through the stories of migrants who have made the perilous journey into Europe
In 2015, more than one million migrants and refugees, most fleeing war-torn countries in Africa and the Middle East, attempted to make the perilous journey into Europe. Around three thousand lost their lives as they crossed the Mediterranean and Aegean in rickety boats provided by unscrupulous traffickers, including over seven hundred men, women, and children in a single day in April 2015.
In one of the first works of narrative nonfiction on the ongoing refugee crisis and the civil war in Syria, Cast Away describes the agonizing stories and the impossible decisions that migrants have to make as they head toward what they believe is a better life: a pregnant Eritrean woman, four days overdue, chooses to board an obviously unsafe smuggler's ship to Greece; a father, swimming from a sinking ship, has to decide whether to hold on to one child or let him go to save another.
Veteran journalist Charlotte McDonald-Gibson offers a vivid, on-the-ground glimpse of the pressures and hopes that drive individuals to risk their lives. Recalling the work of Katherine Boo and Caroline Moorehead, Cast Away brings to life the human consequences of one of the most urgent humanitarian issues of our time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her first book, McDonald-Gibson, a journalist experienced in covering the European Union, examines the last five years of the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean. Her account is told, in large part, through the voices of refugees such as Majid, a young Nigerian forced to flee two different homes, and Sina, an Eritrean woman who, with her husband, did not think of leaving her home until staying became impossible. The author's note at the end of the book clarifies some of her choices including the use of pseudonyms when requested but might have been better placed at the beginning. McDonald-Gibson is shrewd in her presentation of the EU's failures, though she's often less pointed when discussing northern European countries. The book shines as a portrait of the hopes and frustrations of the families and individuals who risk so much for safer lives and the generosities and cruelties, both passive and active, that they encounter in their travels. This book will be illuminating for every reader who wants to better understand the human side of a complex, wrenching issue.