What Strange Paradise

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by Omar El Akkad

From the widely acclaimed author of American War a new novel–beautifully written, unrelentingly dramatic, and profoundly moving–that brings the global refugee crisis down to the level of a child’s eyes.

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Description

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 Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives in their homelands.

And only one has made the nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials but of 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 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 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.

Additional information

Book Condition

Used – Good

Cover

Hardcover

Size

256 pages

Published

2021 by McClelland & Stewart
First published July 20, 2021

Genre

Fiction, Contemporary

Awards

Oregon Book Award for Fiction (2022),
Scotiabank Giller Prize (2021),
CBC Canada Reads Nominee (2022),
Aspen Words Literary Prize Nominee for Shortlist (2022)