Hi everyone and welcome back for Day 23 as we get ready to wrap up this series.
Today’s featured book is…
What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad
Another heart-breaker today, this time a deeply moving, gorgeously lyrical novel existing in the bittersweet space between fantasy and reality, between hope and desperation. This is one of those books I wish more people had read because I so desperately wanted to discuss it with some after I had finished. It tackles some difficult themes, so be mindful of trigger warnings if that might be an issue for you.
I’ll leave you another quote today, because this book really deserves it.
You are the temporary object of their fraudulent outrage, their fraudulent grief. They will march on the streets on your behalf, they will write to the politicians on your behalf, they will cry on your behalf, but you are to them in the end nothing but a hook on which to hang the best possible image of themselves.
Read for: the perfect book club pick; a different viewpoint on the “refugee crisis”; a critique of modern society and performative solidarity.
Synopsis
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 passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives in their homelands. And only one had made the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials, but of Vänna: 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 Vänna and Amir are complete strangers and don’t speak a common language, Vänna determines to do whatever it takes to save him.
In alternating chapters, we learn the story of Amir’s life and of how he came to be on the boat; and we follow the duo as they make their way towards 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. Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise is the story of our collective moment in this time: 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.
Come back tomorrow to discover my final pick!
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