The New Odyssey: The Story of the Twenty-First Century Refugee Crisis
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $22.99
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR and Christian Science Monitor
In the humane tradition of Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers comes a searing account of the international refugee crisis.
On the day of his son’s fourteenth birthday, Hashem al-Souki lay somewhere in the Mediterranean, crammed in a wooden dinghy. His family was relatively safe—at least for the time being—in Egypt, where they had only just settled after fleeing their war-torn Damascus home three years prior. Traversing these unforgiving waters and the treacherous terrain that would follow was worth the slim chance of securing a safe home for his children in Sweden. If he failed, at least he would fail alone.
Hashem’s story is tragically common, as desperate victims continue to embark on deadly journeys in search of freedom. Tracking the harrowing experiences of these brave refugees, The New Odyssey finally illuminates the shadowy networks that have facilitated the largest forced exodus since the end of World War II.
The Guardian’s first-ever migration correspondent, Patrick Kingsley has traveled through seventeen countries to put an indelible face on this overwhelming disaster. Embedding himself alongside the refugees, Kingsley reenacts their flight with hundreds of people across the choppy Mediterranean in the hopes of better understanding who helps or hinders their path to salvation. From the starving migrants who push through sandstorms with children strapped to their backs to the exploitive criminals who prey on them, from the smugglers who dangerously stretch the limits of their cargo space to the volunteers who uproot their own lives to hand out water bottles—what emerges is a kaleidoscope of humanity in the wake of tragedy. By simultaneously tracing the narrative of Hashem, who endured the trek not once but twice, Kingsley memorably creates a compassionate, visceral portrait of the mass migration in both its epic scope and its heartbreaking specificity.
Exposing the realities of this modern-day odyssey as well as the moral shortcomings evident in our own indifference, the result is a crucial call to arms and an unprecedented exploration of a world we too often choose not to know.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Guardian migration correspondent Kingsley (How to Be Danish) has written a moving and timely book that presents the crisis of the subtitle in both microcosm and macrocosm. He opens with an episode from Syrian refugee Hashem al-Souki's harrowing trek from his embattled home country in search of a safe haven for his family in Europe. Kingsley then pulls back to put al-Souki's situation in context, convincingly arguing that while there is a refugee crisis, "it's one caused largely by our response to the refugees, rather than by the refugees themselves." He points out that the number of refugees leaving Turkish shores in 2015 for the stability of Northern Europe represents just 0.2% of the E.U.'s total population, an influx that "the world's richest continent can feasibly absorb." Kingsley also notes that the failure to create an "organized system of mass resettlement" contributed to the situation. Alternating sections tracing al-Souki's odyssey help keep the reader grounded in the horrify-ing realities of the tragedy, while carefully chosen details, such as smugglers setting up Facebook pages to attract business, demonstrate how even responses to crisis can become prosaic. Illus.
Customer Reviews
Migration is not a Crime
The power of language never ceases to amaze me. How one word can completely pivot the lens in which an entire experience is viewed. Patrick Kingsley wisely highlights this point in The New Odyssey. The word migration speaks of the movement of people from one place to another for any reason. When we want to be more specific we say that we immigrate into a country and when we leave one country we emigrate. When we want to be more specific we call people refugees, economic migrants, expatriates, or similar. What we often fail to do is learn the story behind the journey.
For the broader group of those making the epic trek across land and sea; risking kidnap, rape, torture, arrest, and death, theirs is a story of hope against hope. It is immigration for political reasons that would classify them as Refugees in its truest sense and protect them under many International Accords. Yes, not all migrants are fleeing the collapse of one home to find refuge in another and Kingsely rightly points this out. But he is clear that language again can bring clarity to this dilemma. Unfortunately, the West is failing these people by lumping their stories together and using in some cases a patent label of “illegal” for all of them.
As a member of a family of immigrants these stories are too near to me. The response from Western nations to these people is also too familiar. So quick to forget the history of 1933 and the Jews that were turned back to horror they were fleeing. The solutions are there and the moral responsibility too important to turn away from. Again, language is here to help us as much as it has been used to divide us. This book, which should be mandatory reading, is comprehensively detailed with the all of the context that you do and don’t want to hear about. It does the hard work that keeps us properly informed on a topic so easily summarized into the wrong language in most other media outlets.