Told in alternating chapters that chronicle Amir and his family's life until - and during - the disastrous trip, and everything that happens to him after reaching the shores of the island, What Strange Paradise is the story of two children pushed together by a random encounter, and the ways they manage overcome fear and the language barrier that separates them.Įl Akkad's precise prose allows him to inject heartfelt observations throughout the novel.
Vänna, despite being so young, becomes Amir's guardian and guide in this perilous journey.īook News & Features New Kids' Books Put A Human Face On The Refugee Crisis But conditions in the camp are terrible, so the woman who runs the place opts to send Amir to see someone on the other end of the island who might be able to get him back home on another boat. She helps Amir to hide, feeds him, and eventually takes him to a local refugee camp.
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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