What do you think?
Rate this book
What Strange Paradise
WINNER OF THE 2021 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 DUBLIN LITERARY AWARDNATIONAL BESTSELLERFrom 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.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.
256 pages, Paperback
First published July 20, 2021
701 people are currently reading
25001 people want to read
About the author
Omar El Akkad
17 books2,218 followersOmar El Akkad is an author and journalist. He was born in Egypt, grew up in Qatar, moved to Canada as a teenager and now lives in the United States. The start of his journalism career coincided with the start of the war on terror, and over the following decade he reported from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and many other locations around the world. His work earned a National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists. His fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, GQ and many other newspapers and magazines. His debut novel, American War, is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and has been nominated for more than ten other awards. It was listed as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, Washington Post, GQ, NPR, Esquire and was selected by the BBC as one of 100 novels that changed our world. His new novel, What Strange Paradise, was released in July, 2021 and won the Giller Prize, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, and was shortlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. It was also named a best book of the year by the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR and several other publications. Omar lives near Portland, Oregon, where is on the faculty of the Pacific University MFA in Writing program.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,067 reviews
November 14, 2022
Wonderful book. I was really puzzled by the end. Then I sat down to type this review, looking at the cover and book title, and an epiphany! Never has a title conveyed such meaning at the end of a story.
If you’ve read the book and were as confused as I was by the ending, look at the title, then reread chapter 28. What a flying leap Omar El Akkad took writing this. I’m in awe. He respects readers’ ability to work it out.
This is my book club’s pick for September, and what a great pick it is.
Postscript
I have glanced through many reviews of this book, and not one of them alludes to what I believe this story is or how it really ends. To spell it out would be an unforgivable spoiler, so I shan't, but boy, I can't wait to talk in my book club. Maybe I'm all wrong, but right now I don't think so.
DO NOT READ THIS Post-Postscript IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THIS BOOK YET. IT WILL DESTROY IT FOR YOU
If you’ve read the book and were as confused as I was by the ending, look at the title, then reread chapter 28. What a flying leap Omar El Akkad took writing this. I’m in awe. He respects readers’ ability to work it out.
This is my book club’s pick for September, and what a great pick it is.
Postscript
I have glanced through many reviews of this book, and not one of them alludes to what I believe this story is or how it really ends. To spell it out would be an unforgivable spoiler, so I shan't, but boy, I can't wait to talk in my book club. Maybe I'm all wrong, but right now I don't think so.
DO NOT READ THIS Post-Postscript IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THIS BOOK YET. IT WILL DESTROY IT FOR YOU
July 5, 2021
The image of a little boy, washed ashore came to my mind when I began reading this book. An image I remember seeing on the nightly news forcing me to try and imagine what horrific conditions in the country he came from made his parents desperate enough to take this risk that brought him to this shore and now he was dead. An image on the nightly news . Is that all it was? Can anyone who hasn’t experienced the dire need to escape danger or hunger or the impact of a political situation that results in in humane treatment imagine what it is like? Can we imagine what the refugee experience is on a flimsy boat on the sea, how treacherous it might be? Omar El Akkad give us a glimpse through the eyes of nine year old Amir, who escapes with his family from Syria to Egypt and then unknowingly ends up on a boat that leaves him on an unnamed island , probably in Greece .
And who is he, this young boy Amir? To Colonel Kethros, cynical but perhaps brutally realistic, “You are the temporary object of their fraudulent outrage, their fraudulent grief. They will march the streets on your behalf, they will write politicians on your behalf, they will cry on your behalf, but you are in the end nothing but a hook on which to hang the best possible image of themselves. Today you are the only boy in the world and tomorrow it will be as though you never existed.” No . Not to 15 year old Vanna whose courage and goodness and empathy make her want to save this little boy . Vanna, herself a child, with a moral compass, we wish for , “And only after she’s made sure of this will Vanna return to her own home and face the consequences of what she’s done.”
With beautiful writing, and an impactful story, the author raises many questions about the current refugee crisis in the world, about the moral issues we face as human beings. A haunting and affecting novel.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Knopf through Edelweiss.
And who is he, this young boy Amir? To Colonel Kethros, cynical but perhaps brutally realistic, “You are the temporary object of their fraudulent outrage, their fraudulent grief. They will march the streets on your behalf, they will write politicians on your behalf, they will cry on your behalf, but you are in the end nothing but a hook on which to hang the best possible image of themselves. Today you are the only boy in the world and tomorrow it will be as though you never existed.” No . Not to 15 year old Vanna whose courage and goodness and empathy make her want to save this little boy . Vanna, herself a child, with a moral compass, we wish for , “And only after she’s made sure of this will Vanna return to her own home and face the consequences of what she’s done.”
With beautiful writing, and an impactful story, the author raises many questions about the current refugee crisis in the world, about the moral issues we face as human beings. A haunting and affecting novel.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Knopf through Edelweiss.
October 8, 2021
A boat is shipwrecked off a small Greek island fleeing from Syria. All 100+ passengers are dead with the exception of one small boy, Amir, who is 9 years old.
when he awakes on the beach, he runs from the military and is found by a 14 year old Vanna, who wants to see him to safety -off the island or else be shoved into a refugee camp.
The story’s chapters are split from before - which is the journey these migrants are on, hoping for a better life; and the after-An island of paradise for the westerners; but not for those who live there and resent the foreigners for taking their culture and the migrants who continue to arrive to seek refuge from their own home countries.
The racism that exists amongst the migrants Especially those of a Colonel, who is determined to catch Amir, in an attempt to make the world righteous in his view.
Yet, it is still a story of hope. Hope for those who take the treacherous journey. Hope for the young girl to get this child to his people.
The writing is beautiful. The landscape stunning. An emotional journey that we, in the western world, will hopefully never have to know the experience of.
4.5⭐️
when he awakes on the beach, he runs from the military and is found by a 14 year old Vanna, who wants to see him to safety -off the island or else be shoved into a refugee camp.
The story’s chapters are split from before - which is the journey these migrants are on, hoping for a better life; and the after-An island of paradise for the westerners; but not for those who live there and resent the foreigners for taking their culture and the migrants who continue to arrive to seek refuge from their own home countries.
The racism that exists amongst the migrants Especially those of a Colonel, who is determined to catch Amir, in an attempt to make the world righteous in his view.
Yet, it is still a story of hope. Hope for those who take the treacherous journey. Hope for the young girl to get this child to his people.
The writing is beautiful. The landscape stunning. An emotional journey that we, in the western world, will hopefully never have to know the experience of.
4.5⭐️
November 11, 2025
Devastating
July 26, 2021
On Sept. 2, 2015, the world woke to a photo of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi dead on a Turkish beach. The child and 11 other refugees of the Syrian civil war had drowned in the Aegean Sea while trying to reach the Greek island of Kos.
For a moment, the international refugee crisis, which ensnares more than 80 million people, had a face too precious to ignore. The whole planet seemed united in revulsion and resolution. But then that moment passed, swallowed up once again by new waves of apathy, xenophobia and political cowardice.
Omar El Akkad, a journalist and fiction writer born in Egypt and raised in Qatar, won’t let us forget or fall back on resigned platitudes about the intractable nature of the refugee “problem.” His riveting new novel, “What Strange Paradise,” opens at sunrise on a small Mediterranean island. A storm has passed. “The beach is littered with the wreckage of the boat and the wreckage of its passengers,” El Akkad writes. “Dispossessed of nightfall’s temporary burial, the dead ferment indecency.”
The scene is impossibly peaceful, which makes it all the more horrific. Men in white contamination suits creep among the corpses, pocketing jewelry as they go. One of the shipwreck victims is a small boy whose head is pointed toward the waves, “his feet nestled into the warmer, lighter sand that remains dry.” But just as that description invokes the heartbreaking image of Alan Kurdi, this small boy opens his eyes. And runs. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
For a moment, the international refugee crisis, which ensnares more than 80 million people, had a face too precious to ignore. The whole planet seemed united in revulsion and resolution. But then that moment passed, swallowed up once again by new waves of apathy, xenophobia and political cowardice.
Omar El Akkad, a journalist and fiction writer born in Egypt and raised in Qatar, won’t let us forget or fall back on resigned platitudes about the intractable nature of the refugee “problem.” His riveting new novel, “What Strange Paradise,” opens at sunrise on a small Mediterranean island. A storm has passed. “The beach is littered with the wreckage of the boat and the wreckage of its passengers,” El Akkad writes. “Dispossessed of nightfall’s temporary burial, the dead ferment indecency.”
The scene is impossibly peaceful, which makes it all the more horrific. Men in white contamination suits creep among the corpses, pocketing jewelry as they go. One of the shipwreck victims is a small boy whose head is pointed toward the waves, “his feet nestled into the warmer, lighter sand that remains dry.” But just as that description invokes the heartbreaking image of Alan Kurdi, this small boy opens his eyes. And runs. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...
September 2, 2021
God Sustains
(But not in a good way)
There are two kinds of people in the world: psychotics and neurotics. Psychotics are obsessed with changing others; neurotics with changing themselves. I myself am hopelessly neurotic; as, I suspect most people who are attracted to this book. We like reading about the interactions of psychotics and neurotics. It gives us a measure of comfort to know that we are not alone, that others have even more profound neuroses that we have. Our sympathy for their suffering is also amplified by our resentment about the psychopaths who are the cause of such suffering. Reading becomes a kind of neurotic therapy for neurotics.
Psychotics come in a variety of forms but share the ambition to exploit the world in ways passed on to them by psychotic parents, charlatans, voices, spirits, Republicans, or God. Psychotics want and use power as a matter of entitled right. Neurotics are also a variable lot but generally feel that they are defective in some way - genetically, perhaps as a matter of education or background, or psychologically if they feel they aren’t appreciated sufficiently, or even in terms of location if their place in the world is dangerous or merely uncomfortable.
It is mostly psychotics who run things and take advantage of the neurotics who want some form of change in themselves. Sometimes any change at all is welcomed by the neurotics. And neurotics are willing to pay almost anything to get. Or more accurately, to pay for the hope that things will change for the better, that their deficiencies will be compensated, that they will be transported either spiritually or physically to some other place. In short, that they will find happiness.
One of the strangest aspects of the relationships between psychotics and neurotics is that in the absence of psychotics, any group of neurotics will generate their own psychotics. They’re the ones who want to “do things properly.” One character in the novel summarises the situation nicely: “It amazed him, how much chaos people can put up with, so long as what needs doing gets done.” One thing neurotics have is an excess of opinion. So they can’t get much done. This allows neurotics to play neurotics off against one another, and even to organise neurotics to oppress other bands of neurotics also, of course, led by psychotics. Neurotics look to psychotics to correct the wrongs of other psychotics. This does not reduce the quantum of suffering but it does allow everyone to maintain their relative roles in life.
People smugglers are psychotics. So are most businessmen, politicians, and others who want power. Their victims are largely neurotics, who know what psychotics do, how they make their living through exploiting neurotics. Yet they throw themselves into the diabolical relationship like emigrants paying well-known crooks for transport on the high seas to some unspecified destination. Neurosis will not be denied even in the face of likely death by drowning. Children being conned in such a way is understandable. But adults? One thinks of other examples of this strange behaviour - young men signing up for the armed services and police, consuming high-sugar soft-drinks or high-salt burgers because they are what the Pepsi Generation does or because it will Give You Giggles, or voting for an arch-psychotic like Donald Trump. The list is endless really. Psychotics are bullies; neurotics are mugs. The dipole seems baked in to human society.
There is an equilibrium, therefore, in the eco-system of psychotics and neurotics. They thrive on one another. Sometimes psychotics form implicit alliances (the people smugglers and the border patrol guards who both oppress neurotic emigrants). Sometimes neurotics form alliances to combat psychotic regimes (thus necessarily becoming psychotic themselves like antifa and any number of ‘cancel culture’ groups). The relationship between psychotics and neurotics seems stable throughout history and across cultures. It appears as almost a divine law that each group maintain its role to the benefit of the whole. Or as many philosophers and one of the doomed characters in Omar El Akkad’s novel has it “God sustains.”
And obviously God does exactly that - in a manner remarkably like what he did for William Golding’s Pincher Martin, another neurotic seafarer.
Postscript: I have been discussing my comments with another GR reader privately. I think some clarifications are necessary: First, not all psychotics are psychopaths, who may be classed as extreme psychotics. But we are all on the spectrum of mental illness. Trying to escape from our condition by turning to psychopathy (the usual route) is a losing strategy. It pushes us more to the extreme of mental illness. I was reminded by my correspondent that the idea of the American abolitionist’s to the effect that “If one of us is unfree, all are slaves,” applies to our human condition in general. The hypothesis, not unique to me of course, is that placing oneself at the service of those even more neurotic than oneself is the only effective therapy for improving our position on the spectrum, in fact for moving the whole spectrum up a notch toward sanity. To paraphrase the abolitionists: “Either we all get a bit better or none of us do.”
(But not in a good way)
There are two kinds of people in the world: psychotics and neurotics. Psychotics are obsessed with changing others; neurotics with changing themselves. I myself am hopelessly neurotic; as, I suspect most people who are attracted to this book. We like reading about the interactions of psychotics and neurotics. It gives us a measure of comfort to know that we are not alone, that others have even more profound neuroses that we have. Our sympathy for their suffering is also amplified by our resentment about the psychopaths who are the cause of such suffering. Reading becomes a kind of neurotic therapy for neurotics.
Psychotics come in a variety of forms but share the ambition to exploit the world in ways passed on to them by psychotic parents, charlatans, voices, spirits, Republicans, or God. Psychotics want and use power as a matter of entitled right. Neurotics are also a variable lot but generally feel that they are defective in some way - genetically, perhaps as a matter of education or background, or psychologically if they feel they aren’t appreciated sufficiently, or even in terms of location if their place in the world is dangerous or merely uncomfortable.
It is mostly psychotics who run things and take advantage of the neurotics who want some form of change in themselves. Sometimes any change at all is welcomed by the neurotics. And neurotics are willing to pay almost anything to get. Or more accurately, to pay for the hope that things will change for the better, that their deficiencies will be compensated, that they will be transported either spiritually or physically to some other place. In short, that they will find happiness.
One of the strangest aspects of the relationships between psychotics and neurotics is that in the absence of psychotics, any group of neurotics will generate their own psychotics. They’re the ones who want to “do things properly.” One character in the novel summarises the situation nicely: “It amazed him, how much chaos people can put up with, so long as what needs doing gets done.” One thing neurotics have is an excess of opinion. So they can’t get much done. This allows neurotics to play neurotics off against one another, and even to organise neurotics to oppress other bands of neurotics also, of course, led by psychotics. Neurotics look to psychotics to correct the wrongs of other psychotics. This does not reduce the quantum of suffering but it does allow everyone to maintain their relative roles in life.
People smugglers are psychotics. So are most businessmen, politicians, and others who want power. Their victims are largely neurotics, who know what psychotics do, how they make their living through exploiting neurotics. Yet they throw themselves into the diabolical relationship like emigrants paying well-known crooks for transport on the high seas to some unspecified destination. Neurosis will not be denied even in the face of likely death by drowning. Children being conned in such a way is understandable. But adults? One thinks of other examples of this strange behaviour - young men signing up for the armed services and police, consuming high-sugar soft-drinks or high-salt burgers because they are what the Pepsi Generation does or because it will Give You Giggles, or voting for an arch-psychotic like Donald Trump. The list is endless really. Psychotics are bullies; neurotics are mugs. The dipole seems baked in to human society.
There is an equilibrium, therefore, in the eco-system of psychotics and neurotics. They thrive on one another. Sometimes psychotics form implicit alliances (the people smugglers and the border patrol guards who both oppress neurotic emigrants). Sometimes neurotics form alliances to combat psychotic regimes (thus necessarily becoming psychotic themselves like antifa and any number of ‘cancel culture’ groups). The relationship between psychotics and neurotics seems stable throughout history and across cultures. It appears as almost a divine law that each group maintain its role to the benefit of the whole. Or as many philosophers and one of the doomed characters in Omar El Akkad’s novel has it “God sustains.”
And obviously God does exactly that - in a manner remarkably like what he did for William Golding’s Pincher Martin, another neurotic seafarer.
Postscript: I have been discussing my comments with another GR reader privately. I think some clarifications are necessary: First, not all psychotics are psychopaths, who may be classed as extreme psychotics. But we are all on the spectrum of mental illness. Trying to escape from our condition by turning to psychopathy (the usual route) is a losing strategy. It pushes us more to the extreme of mental illness. I was reminded by my correspondent that the idea of the American abolitionist’s to the effect that “If one of us is unfree, all are slaves,” applies to our human condition in general. The hypothesis, not unique to me of course, is that placing oneself at the service of those even more neurotic than oneself is the only effective therapy for improving our position on the spectrum, in fact for moving the whole spectrum up a notch toward sanity. To paraphrase the abolitionists: “Either we all get a bit better or none of us do.”
November 3, 2021
Wow!!! Devastating > heart-pounding moments!!
The Syrian refugee crisis is the world’s largest refugee displacement crisis of our time —
“What Strange Paradise” was
riveting—[tension-storytelling 101]….
—a short-powerful-punch of heartbreak!
Children being forced to flee their home — is a nightmare….
so ….
the unsettling ending was sad but appropriate.
yet ….
not all hope is wasted in vain.
…..at least I hope not!
The Syrian refugee crisis is the world’s largest refugee displacement crisis of our time —
“What Strange Paradise” was
riveting—[tension-storytelling 101]….
—a short-powerful-punch of heartbreak!
Children being forced to flee their home — is a nightmare….
so ….
the unsettling ending was sad but appropriate.
yet ….
not all hope is wasted in vain.
…..at least I hope not!
November 10, 2021
This is the winner of the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Should I say more or is that good enough to sell this book?
If I may be honest, I was completely bored from beginning to end.
I also listened to the audiobook narrated by Dion Graham. It only added to my boredom.
This is supposed to be a very heartbreaking story, touching the subject of refugee immigrants, through the eyes of a child. But I felt nothing except that I had the impression that I have read a similar story somewhere.
Although I appreciated the writing, I wasn’t a fan of its structure and I thought that there was no depth in the character’s development. This felt more like a novella rather than a novel.
Also, I felt that the author wrote this with some anger and therefore blocked any other emotion that could have been attributed to this work. But that’s my personal impression.
The conclusion was somewhat confusing and very disappointing.
I really wanted to love this work, but it wasn’t for me.
Should I say more or is that good enough to sell this book?
If I may be honest, I was completely bored from beginning to end.
I also listened to the audiobook narrated by Dion Graham. It only added to my boredom.
This is supposed to be a very heartbreaking story, touching the subject of refugee immigrants, through the eyes of a child. But I felt nothing except that I had the impression that I have read a similar story somewhere.
Although I appreciated the writing, I wasn’t a fan of its structure and I thought that there was no depth in the character’s development. This felt more like a novella rather than a novel.
Also, I felt that the author wrote this with some anger and therefore blocked any other emotion that could have been attributed to this work. But that’s my personal impression.
The conclusion was somewhat confusing and very disappointing.
I really wanted to love this work, but it wasn’t for me.
January 29, 2022
4.5/5 rounded down.
While reading this story I could not help think of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, whose body was found washed up on a beach in Turkey back in 2015 having drowned somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea while fleeing Syria. His story made the headlines and the picture of that beautiful little boy lying lifeless on a beach made the whole world sit up and take note of the plight and treatment of refugees and asylum seekers across the world.
Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise is a story written along those lines. At the onset of the novel we meet Amir Utu, an eight-year-old Syrian refugee - the sole survivor of a shipwrecked boat carrying refugees to the intended destination of the island of Kos. Amir, in a semiconscious state, is found with the bodies of his deceased fellow passengers, washed up on the shores of an island in the Mediterranean. The island is depicted as a vacation destination of choice for international tourists. However, the influx of refugees seeking asylum, shipwrecks and tragedies similar to this one have also attracted much attention in the media.
“Between them, the coast guard and the morgue keep a partial count of the dead, and as of this morning it stands at 1,026 but this number is as much an abstraction as the dead themselves are to the people who live here, to whom all the shipwrecks of the previous year are a single shipwreck, all the bodies a single body.”
The narrative is split across two timelines – generically titled “Before” and “After”. The former traces the events that lead to Amir being washed ashore. We get to know the details of Amir’s family and how he got to be on that boat. We also meet some of his fellow passengers and are privy to their stories and aspirations. While they look for a better life in the West, they are not completely ignorant of the reality of their situation and how they, as refugees, are regarded in a foreign land. In the “After” timeline , we find Amir running from Colonel Dimitri Kethros and his officers who are tasked with rounding up the illegals and processing them through regulated refugee camps, the living conditions in which leave a lot to be desired. While on the run , he ends up near the home of Vanna Hermes, a young girl of fifteen, who takes it upon herself to keep him safe and help him in whatever way possible. Vanna and Amir might not speak the same language but they do communicate with each other through broken words, non-verbal cues, their hearts and humanity. When I say that this is an emotional read, I mean that as a reader you will feel a lot. In my case, I alternated between feelings of anger, frustration, shock and sorrow.
“But you can’t bet your future on work that requires the coming together of people, not now, not with the world the way it is. The days of people coming together are ending; this is a time for coming apart.”
What I found impressive about Omar El Ekkad’s style of writing is that he does not force emotions on the reader. In fact, at times the narrative comes across as factual and detached, especially in the scenes on the boat. The conversations are simply the exchange of dialogue. The events are described just as they happen. The author tells a story and gives the readers space to feel what they need to feel instead of going heavy on melodrama. This is not an entertaining or enjoyable read- the subject matter does not allow it to be. It is, however, hard-hitting and thought-provoking. The prose is straightforward and beautiful and I applaud the author’s restrained tone in narrating a story that revolves around a sensitive, controversial and polarizing issue. I commend the author for humanizing the issue and not overly politicizing it. We see the stark contrasts that define the refugee crisis -brutality and kindness, hope and despair, humanitarianism and political agenda, xenophobia and asylum, cynicism and innocence. The final chapter titled “Now” might change the way you feel about the book but ultimately this is a very well-written and relevant story that will leave a lasting impression.
“You are the temporary object of their fraudulent outrage, their fraudulent grief. They will march the streets on your behalf, they will write to 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. Today you are the only boy in the world and tomorrow it will be as though you never existed.”
While reading this story I could not help think of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, whose body was found washed up on a beach in Turkey back in 2015 having drowned somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea while fleeing Syria. His story made the headlines and the picture of that beautiful little boy lying lifeless on a beach made the whole world sit up and take note of the plight and treatment of refugees and asylum seekers across the world.
Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise is a story written along those lines. At the onset of the novel we meet Amir Utu, an eight-year-old Syrian refugee - the sole survivor of a shipwrecked boat carrying refugees to the intended destination of the island of Kos. Amir, in a semiconscious state, is found with the bodies of his deceased fellow passengers, washed up on the shores of an island in the Mediterranean. The island is depicted as a vacation destination of choice for international tourists. However, the influx of refugees seeking asylum, shipwrecks and tragedies similar to this one have also attracted much attention in the media.
“Between them, the coast guard and the morgue keep a partial count of the dead, and as of this morning it stands at 1,026 but this number is as much an abstraction as the dead themselves are to the people who live here, to whom all the shipwrecks of the previous year are a single shipwreck, all the bodies a single body.”
The narrative is split across two timelines – generically titled “Before” and “After”. The former traces the events that lead to Amir being washed ashore. We get to know the details of Amir’s family and how he got to be on that boat. We also meet some of his fellow passengers and are privy to their stories and aspirations. While they look for a better life in the West, they are not completely ignorant of the reality of their situation and how they, as refugees, are regarded in a foreign land. In the “After” timeline , we find Amir running from Colonel Dimitri Kethros and his officers who are tasked with rounding up the illegals and processing them through regulated refugee camps, the living conditions in which leave a lot to be desired. While on the run , he ends up near the home of Vanna Hermes, a young girl of fifteen, who takes it upon herself to keep him safe and help him in whatever way possible. Vanna and Amir might not speak the same language but they do communicate with each other through broken words, non-verbal cues, their hearts and humanity. When I say that this is an emotional read, I mean that as a reader you will feel a lot. In my case, I alternated between feelings of anger, frustration, shock and sorrow.
“But you can’t bet your future on work that requires the coming together of people, not now, not with the world the way it is. The days of people coming together are ending; this is a time for coming apart.”
What I found impressive about Omar El Ekkad’s style of writing is that he does not force emotions on the reader. In fact, at times the narrative comes across as factual and detached, especially in the scenes on the boat. The conversations are simply the exchange of dialogue. The events are described just as they happen. The author tells a story and gives the readers space to feel what they need to feel instead of going heavy on melodrama. This is not an entertaining or enjoyable read- the subject matter does not allow it to be. It is, however, hard-hitting and thought-provoking. The prose is straightforward and beautiful and I applaud the author’s restrained tone in narrating a story that revolves around a sensitive, controversial and polarizing issue. I commend the author for humanizing the issue and not overly politicizing it. We see the stark contrasts that define the refugee crisis -brutality and kindness, hope and despair, humanitarianism and political agenda, xenophobia and asylum, cynicism and innocence. The final chapter titled “Now” might change the way you feel about the book but ultimately this is a very well-written and relevant story that will leave a lasting impression.
“You are the temporary object of their fraudulent outrage, their fraudulent grief. They will march the streets on your behalf, they will write to 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. Today you are the only boy in the world and tomorrow it will be as though you never existed.”
December 24, 2021
FINAL REVIEW: One of the best books I’ve ever read. (I don’t say that lightly). This little thing hit me in the feels.
WHAT STRANGE PARADISE opens with the visual of bodies being washed up on the shore of an unnamed island. Among them are a young Syrian refugee boy, who turns out to be the sole survivor of a horrific shipwreck. The boy narrowly escapes being captured by the military, and is rescued by a young native girl. The novel then alternates between chapters: labeled “Before” (outlining how this boy ended up on this ship) and “After” (which is the present; the boy’s escape).
This book is quick-paced and has a tendency to make you feel breathless at times. The story almost reads like a fable and/or an adventure story. There’s something magical about the experience: from the budding friendship between the two young leads who do not speak the same language, coming up with inventive ways of communication; to the propulsive-like energy of their trying to escape a determined soldier who is closing in on their trail; to the prose which is deceptively simplified, sentences that are straight-forward but always brimming with so much meaning. Even though this story is an intimate one, El Akkad wanted to find a way to get us to understand the struggles of refugees in a wide scope. We recognize the boy’s fears and witness the attitudes of what his presence means to others: people with savior complexes; those who aid and have empathy; people whose job is to send him back; the dismissive attitude of the natives and tourists.
With that said, this book’s true success was in how it made me feel: it left me feeling both numb and shaken. I was not expecting to feel this wounded. I believe the conclusion of this novel is going to be the make-it or break-it factor for most readers. If you don’t gel with the ending, the book may do nothing for you. If you loved the ending, as I did, you may turn into an emotional wreck. And I love a good read that leaves me a wreck; that’s what makes it my favorite book of the year.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CX2BjdHLF...
WHAT STRANGE PARADISE opens with the visual of bodies being washed up on the shore of an unnamed island. Among them are a young Syrian refugee boy, who turns out to be the sole survivor of a horrific shipwreck. The boy narrowly escapes being captured by the military, and is rescued by a young native girl. The novel then alternates between chapters: labeled “Before” (outlining how this boy ended up on this ship) and “After” (which is the present; the boy’s escape).
This book is quick-paced and has a tendency to make you feel breathless at times. The story almost reads like a fable and/or an adventure story. There’s something magical about the experience: from the budding friendship between the two young leads who do not speak the same language, coming up with inventive ways of communication; to the propulsive-like energy of their trying to escape a determined soldier who is closing in on their trail; to the prose which is deceptively simplified, sentences that are straight-forward but always brimming with so much meaning. Even though this story is an intimate one, El Akkad wanted to find a way to get us to understand the struggles of refugees in a wide scope. We recognize the boy’s fears and witness the attitudes of what his presence means to others: people with savior complexes; those who aid and have empathy; people whose job is to send him back; the dismissive attitude of the natives and tourists.
With that said, this book’s true success was in how it made me feel: it left me feeling both numb and shaken. I was not expecting to feel this wounded. I believe the conclusion of this novel is going to be the make-it or break-it factor for most readers. If you don’t gel with the ending, the book may do nothing for you. If you loved the ending, as I did, you may turn into an emotional wreck. And I love a good read that leaves me a wreck; that’s what makes it my favorite book of the year.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CX2BjdHLF...
August 10, 2021
Amir Utu is a 9 year old Syrian boy who follows his uncle onto a fishing boat in which his uncle is fleeing the Middle East, leaving behind Amir’s mother and baby brother.
The boat is loaded with passengers, above and below deck. A tumultuous journey…the boat doesn’t hold up and Amir ends up being the only survivor landed on a Greek Island.
This story goes back and forth “Before” and “After” the boat journey.
Once Amir comes to after being ashore he runs off from the beach and a local 15 yr old girl befriends him and tries to keep him safe from the authorities.
This is a moving story of the migrant crisis.
The boat is loaded with passengers, above and below deck. A tumultuous journey…the boat doesn’t hold up and Amir ends up being the only survivor landed on a Greek Island.
This story goes back and forth “Before” and “After” the boat journey.
Once Amir comes to after being ashore he runs off from the beach and a local 15 yr old girl befriends him and tries to keep him safe from the authorities.
This is a moving story of the migrant crisis.
November 11, 2021
As she watches (the sunhead swifts) flying up over the eastern cliffs this morning, they break into strange new formations, asymmetrical and chaotic. All but a handful turn in one direction, a trickle dissents, and then a fault line runs jagged through the heart of the flock like a landmass coming undone. Something about the island is changing, she thinks, and the birds are the first to feel it.
Winner of the 2021 Giller Prize — Canada’s “richest” literary award — What Strange Paradise is an empathetically written account of one nine year old Syrian boy’s journey as an unwilling refugee. Separated into alternating “Before” and “After” chapters, we learn how Amir ended up on a decrepit boat crossing the Mediterranean (and follow the frightful voyage he took with a varied cast of other desperate people) and watch as a local girl tries to help the foreign boy who washed up on her home island’s shore (all while keeping one step ahead of the military forces looking for Amir). I say this is “empathetically” written because author Omar El Akkad gives voice to every possible point of view (from cosmopolitan Syrians who believe that reports of razed villages are “fake news”, to the human smugglers who justify their efforts to make their own way in the world, to the Greek colonel who believes that the boatloads of refugees are an attempt at back door colonisation), and despite acknowledging all of the arguments against refugees taking this most desperate leap into the unknown, El Akkad never lets the reader forget that little boys do wash up on foreign shores and they deserve to be treated with kindness and humanity. How do we keep forgetting that in the debate over “what should be done”? With truly crisp, thoughtful, and balanced writing, I think this is a thoroughly worthy and timely Giller winner.
Once, years earlier, Amir’s father told him that none of this started with bombs or bullets or a few stupid kids spray-painting the slogans of the revolution on the walls. It started with a drought. You come from farmers, he said, and five years before you were born the earth turned on us, the earth withheld. We are the products of that withholding. Every man you ever meet is nothing but the product of what was withheld from him, what he feels owed. Don’t call this a conflict, Amir’s father said. There’s no such thing as conflict. There’s only scarcity, there’s only need.
This is a rather short read, but with characters organically stating profound truths, it has both heft and nuance. And with the storyline split the way it is — getting to know Amir through the before chapters, and following along with his flight for freedom in the after — there’s an earned tension to the plot; you eventually identify with Amir and want what he wants. Along the way we meet tourists who are put out that corpses washing up have closed the beach at their resort for the day, we meet right wing politicians who want to know why these “so-called refugees” all seem to have cell phones, we meet desperate people fleeing desperate circumstances who believe that just reaching the West will equal safety, and we meet the clear-eyed pragmatists who would disabuse them of that notion:
The West you talk about doesn’t exist. It’s a fairy tale, a fantasy you sell yourself because the alternative is to admit that you are the least important character in your own story. You invent an entire world because your conscience demands it, you invent good people and bad people and you draw a neat line between them because your simplistic morality demands it. But the two kinds of people in this world are not good and bad — they’re engines and fuel. Go ahead, change your country, change your name, change your accent, pull the skin right off your bones, but in their eyes they will always be the engines and you will always, always be fuel.
I agree with other readers that the final chapter (“Now”) seems to undermine the essence of this book, but in this interview, El Akkad explains what’s happening there and it serves to remind me how cosy and removed from the refugee experience I am. Once again, I’ll call this a compelling read and a very worthy winner.
July 11, 2021
’I taught you to fight and to fly. What more could there be?’
-- J.M. Barrie Peter Pan
It began when the water supply began to dwindle, and water shortages began to threaten not only the farmers livelihood, but everyone depending on the food they produced as the years passed. The scarcity of food increased the anxiety over food, creating panic, creating a need to seek out a new way of life, a new place to call home where food was plentiful.
People living through a crisis, dying through this crisis, with only one goal in mind. To find a place where there is food, and a life that offers hope for the future. A simple request, it seems - the basics - food, water, a simple place to sleep at night.
This story begins as one of the passengers, a young boy, lies on the shore, surrounded by the boat’s wreckage, as well as the passengers. The storm has passed, the sea now calm, and the morning is eerily quiet, except for the sounds of birds and sirens in the distance, and those crowd of people who have gathered to take in the scene.
One passenger manages to survive, a nine-year-old Syrian boy named Amir. He is found by Vänna, a teenage girl who is single-minded in her desire to save him from the fate she knows he is destined for without help. Although neither speaks the other’s language, he seems to understand when she beckons him without a word. With the men’s voices growing louder in the background, he doesn’t hesitate to follow her.
Alternating chapters share the story of before, the story of what brought Amir to be one of the passengers on this boat is shared through, as well as the journey in the days after, following Amir’s journey in search of a new home and safety. But at the same time, it is more than that. It is a story that exposes the lack of compassion, selfishness and callousness of some to the plight of others, while also sharing the willingness of some to reach out to those in desperate circumstances. It is a powerfully tender story, at times, shared through graceful prose about a child hunted because of their status as a refugee and the unvarnished truth of the indifference of too many. Sometimes even one person can make the difference.
Pub Date: 20 Jul 2021
Many thanks for the ARC provided by Random House / Knopf
November 14, 2021
Despite its urgent subject matter, this book unfortunately didn’t work for me, perhaps because I’m allergic to fictional instrumentalism. It is so forceful in its messaging – so expository, so convenient in its plotting, so black and white in its characterization – that it lost its impact for me. A much stronger demonstration of our interconnected humanity can be found in books like Apeirogon.
Mood: That of a thriller
Rating: 6/10
Mood: That of a thriller
Rating: 6/10
December 3, 2021
Wow—what a tremendous book!! I loved it! I am finding it a bit difficult to write a review, though. I've noticed I'm not the only person who was a little confused by the ending. I did some research to try to figure it out, and after doing this reading, I believe this is just one of those books where the author would like each reader to interpret it in their own way. Fair enough!
Suffice to say, though, that this was a wonderful read—I enjoyed every page, HOWEVER, parts of it were, at times, difficult to read because, after all, the book is about the global refugee crisis. It is very sad that some countries—or, at least, some of their citizenry—do not welcome refugees as do some others. Many are openly hostile, vile, and racist—as disgusting in their treatment of refugees as we are disgusted by their actions toward them. These refugees are vulnerable! They've been forced to flee their homes due to war, famine, terrorism, and who knows what else. And they are human beings. They are desperate! They should be welcomed with open arms and given all the care they deserve because SOME DAY, the tables could turn.
5 bright, glistening stars to guide all migrants to safe harbour ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Suffice to say, though, that this was a wonderful read—I enjoyed every page, HOWEVER, parts of it were, at times, difficult to read because, after all, the book is about the global refugee crisis. It is very sad that some countries—or, at least, some of their citizenry—do not welcome refugees as do some others. Many are openly hostile, vile, and racist—as disgusting in their treatment of refugees as we are disgusted by their actions toward them. These refugees are vulnerable! They've been forced to flee their homes due to war, famine, terrorism, and who knows what else. And they are human beings. They are desperate! They should be welcomed with open arms and given all the care they deserve because SOME DAY, the tables could turn.
5 bright, glistening stars to guide all migrants to safe harbour ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
August 10, 2022
This was an interesting book to read. I wish we had more information on the country of asylum but I guess the point was to be general because this reflects many countries' views on refugees.
The book was short, the author delivered the main idea behind his book in a sufficient number of pages and he did it very well.
I recommend reading the book. I tried listening to the audio but I couldn’t maintain my focus. When I started reading, I made progress faster and understood the story better.
Overall, recommended if you’re looking for a short story about a refugee’s (young boy in this case) onward movement, by sea, to another country as well as the response of the local authorities in thr host country.
The book was short, the author delivered the main idea behind his book in a sufficient number of pages and he did it very well.
I recommend reading the book. I tried listening to the audio but I couldn’t maintain my focus. When I started reading, I made progress faster and understood the story better.
Overall, recommended if you’re looking for a short story about a refugee’s (young boy in this case) onward movement, by sea, to another country as well as the response of the local authorities in thr host country.
September 24, 2021
A beautifully written, quite cinematic novel which focuses an a Syrian child refugee, who becomes separated from both his mother and his uncle, with whom he has been travelling. The book is written in alternating “before” and “after” chapters. The former focus on the details of his passage and the conversations of fellow migrants aboard a rickety old fishing boat. These chapters do much to convey the hopes and aspirations of those leaving their homeland and the transactional cynicism of those that smuggle them. The “later” chapters describe the experience of the boy once he’s washed up on the shore of an unnamed Greek island in the Aegean Sea, seemingly befriended by a fifteen-year-old girl who lives on the island. The author more or less pulls the rug out from under the reader in a final chapter entitled “Now”. I admit I’m not keen on such twists and authorial sleights of hand. After thinking about the conclusion for a bit, I feel that while I may understand El Akkad’s aim, I’m still not satisfied by it. I found it frustrating and a bit gimmicky after a thought-provoking reading experience that combined the political, the spiritual, and the fabulistic. It is a worthy book to appear on the Canadian Giller Prize list of nominees.
September 30, 2023
This is a book about a most important issue and topic in our present world. Refugees from places of conflict from around the world, most heading to Western countries, in the case of this book, from Syria, via Egypt, then on to Greece, looking for asylum. The journey and trauma are real and horrific.
Mr Akkad brings humanity to this trauma. Amir is a 9 year old partaking in the journey. He is discovered and helped by Vanna, a teenager who helps him, with the 'bad guys?' chasing.
I wanted to like this more than I did, but it felt too much like connecting the numbers. I felt the time 'before' in particularly came across as rote and hollow. I found a more real experience of boat people in No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison by Behrouz Boochani,
Omid Tofighian (Translator) so much more real and confronting.
It was an enlightening and important read, just did not resonate with me as much as what I have read previously.
Mr Akkad brings humanity to this trauma. Amir is a 9 year old partaking in the journey. He is discovered and helped by Vanna, a teenager who helps him, with the 'bad guys?' chasing.
I wanted to like this more than I did, but it felt too much like connecting the numbers. I felt the time 'before' in particularly came across as rote and hollow. I found a more real experience of boat people in No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison by Behrouz Boochani,
Omid Tofighian (Translator) so much more real and confronting.
It was an enlightening and important read, just did not resonate with me as much as what I have read previously.
December 4, 2021
** spoiler alert ** About that ending…
El Akkad has won the Scotiabank Giller Prize this year for “What Strange Paradise.” I just finished reading it and found it wonderful, disturbing, frustrating, and thought-provoking all at once. This book will, I suspect, confuse a considerable number of readers. I say this because of the ending, which I must confess upon first reading made me rear up and go WTF?
The novel is ostensibly about young Amir, an 8yr old Syrian refugee tricked into boarding a rickety, unseaworthy, pick-up-sticks, overcrowded boat by human traffickers making a run for a Mediterranean island (presumably in Greece). The boat sinks, predictably, and we are told (or are we?) that Amir is the only survivor.
From the beginning, the novel is told in two time frames, “Before” (the shipwreck), and “After”… or at least we are until the very last chapter, which is “Now.”
The Before chapters follow Amir and his fellow passengers, a mixed bag of the good, the bad, and the ugly, on their harrowing, ill-fated journey.
The After chapters follow Amir and a teenaged girl from the island, Vanna, as they try to escape the clutches of a morally corrupt Colonel, and various other characters, good, bad, and ugly.
The novel leaves breadcrumbs for the reader indicating that these two children, orphans in many ways although perhaps not literal ones, are in a sort of fairy tale, a kind of fable designed by El Akkad to teach the privileged reader the truth of the complicated moral landscape we enter when we step into the land of the refugee. Stories within stories, bells on the toes of the dead, and around Amir’s neck, for example.
We — the comfortable, safe and privileged — want, El Akkad seems to be saying, hope. We need it. We crave it. And in the end, when it is denied us, we feel cheated, even angry. We are not comfortable seeing things as they are, in the Now. And so, we learn in the last chapter that Amir did not in fact survive the terrible journey. He is the lost refugee child we have all seen in photographs, his small body rolling in the shallow surf, face down, as though sleeping.
I understand the emotional reaction El Akkad was intending, and I experienced it, I think, as intended, and admit it’s clever. I also feel that because the point of view in the After chapters ventures into the psyches of characters other than Amir (the colonel, the aid worker, Vanna, etc), the reader can’t help but question whether, on a technical level, the narrative works. Who is telling this story? The reader? Is that El Akkad’s intention? Perhaps, but I can’t be sure. Had the narrative stayed firmly in Amir’s consciousness the reader would have been able to grasp, I feel, El Akkad’s intention more clearly. Were he to have chosen a different point of view, however, it would have been more difficult for El Akkad to portray the inner lives of any character other than Amir, and perhaps he didn’t feel up to it, or perhaps he felt the power of the ending rests in its shock value, in how it makes us feel we’ve been lied to, in our confusion, and in our disorientation (not unlike that of a refugee…).
There is an astonishing passage of enormous beauty when Amir is tumbling first through air, and then down, down, down through the water (one of those breadcrumbs the author provides the reader):
“Amir took flight. Headlong into the seaborne sky, the roof of the great inverted world. In meeting him the water was not cold or concussive but warm and tranquil, its temperature the temperature of a body, the temperature of blood. With ease and without pain, he flew past the surface, past the depths, past the places where light and life surrendered and the domain of stillness began. And then lower, farther, past the crust of a million interlocking bodies who’d braved this passage before him and come to rest at the bottom, sick with the secrets of their own unallowed mourning. Past the smallest flour-white bones, past the world at the feet of the world. To the lowest deep, then a lower deep still. Until finally to a dry womb of a place in which were kept safe and unchanging everyone he had ever known, and everyone each of those had ever known, outward forever to encompass the whole of the living and the lived. And each of these the boy met, in their old lives and their new lives waiting, and from each drew confession and each he felt into as though there were no barrier between them, no silo of self to keep a soul waiting. What beautiful rebellion, to feel into another, to feel anything at all.”
We are told, you see, that he has “come to rest at the bottom,” which can only been death, even as the next sentence tell us he surfaces… confusing. But what a bottom it is, full of connection, where us vs them simply doesn’t exist.
And then, there is this passage from Vanna’s point of view:
“Vänna raises herself onto the balls of her feet. She lifts her arms up and outward and feels the breeze between her fingers. She leans back. The bridge turns to sky, the ground to air. How beautiful in their simplicity are the constituent parts of flight. This magic of endless falling that wraps itself around her, this way the body becomes a lightness and the lightness a world. It requires no trajectory, no destination, only a parcel of air and the willingness to never land.”
Falling backwards from a bridge while being pursued can only lead to death, but like the Amir passage, we soon learn she survives. Similaries between the two passages are clear.
Finally, a passage from the evil (but also broken) Colonel speaking to Amir:
‘“But you should know what you are,” he says. “You are the temporary object of their fraudulent outrage, their fraudulent grief. They will march the streets on your behalf, they will write to 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. Today you are the only boy in the world and tomorrow it will be as though you never existed.”’
The reader becomes the ‘they’ of this passage, and we are told that ‘tomorrow’ it will be as though Amir never existed, as indeed the entire After narrative is proven not to exist in the final chapter. We hope that Amir and Vanna have, as we’ve been told, board a boat captained by an old man taking them to a mythical land of their own people who will care for them, at least until we turn the page and realized we’ve been, for want of a better word, duped.
The world is full of ghosts, El Akkad seems to be saying. We are among them. And we have no idea what to do, how to behave, how to feel. There is, in short, no us and them, none at all and we let each other down at every step.
El Akkad has won the Scotiabank Giller Prize this year for “What Strange Paradise.” I just finished reading it and found it wonderful, disturbing, frustrating, and thought-provoking all at once. This book will, I suspect, confuse a considerable number of readers. I say this because of the ending, which I must confess upon first reading made me rear up and go WTF?
The novel is ostensibly about young Amir, an 8yr old Syrian refugee tricked into boarding a rickety, unseaworthy, pick-up-sticks, overcrowded boat by human traffickers making a run for a Mediterranean island (presumably in Greece). The boat sinks, predictably, and we are told (or are we?) that Amir is the only survivor.
From the beginning, the novel is told in two time frames, “Before” (the shipwreck), and “After”… or at least we are until the very last chapter, which is “Now.”
The Before chapters follow Amir and his fellow passengers, a mixed bag of the good, the bad, and the ugly, on their harrowing, ill-fated journey.
The After chapters follow Amir and a teenaged girl from the island, Vanna, as they try to escape the clutches of a morally corrupt Colonel, and various other characters, good, bad, and ugly.
The novel leaves breadcrumbs for the reader indicating that these two children, orphans in many ways although perhaps not literal ones, are in a sort of fairy tale, a kind of fable designed by El Akkad to teach the privileged reader the truth of the complicated moral landscape we enter when we step into the land of the refugee. Stories within stories, bells on the toes of the dead, and around Amir’s neck, for example.
We — the comfortable, safe and privileged — want, El Akkad seems to be saying, hope. We need it. We crave it. And in the end, when it is denied us, we feel cheated, even angry. We are not comfortable seeing things as they are, in the Now. And so, we learn in the last chapter that Amir did not in fact survive the terrible journey. He is the lost refugee child we have all seen in photographs, his small body rolling in the shallow surf, face down, as though sleeping.
I understand the emotional reaction El Akkad was intending, and I experienced it, I think, as intended, and admit it’s clever. I also feel that because the point of view in the After chapters ventures into the psyches of characters other than Amir (the colonel, the aid worker, Vanna, etc), the reader can’t help but question whether, on a technical level, the narrative works. Who is telling this story? The reader? Is that El Akkad’s intention? Perhaps, but I can’t be sure. Had the narrative stayed firmly in Amir’s consciousness the reader would have been able to grasp, I feel, El Akkad’s intention more clearly. Were he to have chosen a different point of view, however, it would have been more difficult for El Akkad to portray the inner lives of any character other than Amir, and perhaps he didn’t feel up to it, or perhaps he felt the power of the ending rests in its shock value, in how it makes us feel we’ve been lied to, in our confusion, and in our disorientation (not unlike that of a refugee…).
There is an astonishing passage of enormous beauty when Amir is tumbling first through air, and then down, down, down through the water (one of those breadcrumbs the author provides the reader):
“Amir took flight. Headlong into the seaborne sky, the roof of the great inverted world. In meeting him the water was not cold or concussive but warm and tranquil, its temperature the temperature of a body, the temperature of blood. With ease and without pain, he flew past the surface, past the depths, past the places where light and life surrendered and the domain of stillness began. And then lower, farther, past the crust of a million interlocking bodies who’d braved this passage before him and come to rest at the bottom, sick with the secrets of their own unallowed mourning. Past the smallest flour-white bones, past the world at the feet of the world. To the lowest deep, then a lower deep still. Until finally to a dry womb of a place in which were kept safe and unchanging everyone he had ever known, and everyone each of those had ever known, outward forever to encompass the whole of the living and the lived. And each of these the boy met, in their old lives and their new lives waiting, and from each drew confession and each he felt into as though there were no barrier between them, no silo of self to keep a soul waiting. What beautiful rebellion, to feel into another, to feel anything at all.”
We are told, you see, that he has “come to rest at the bottom,” which can only been death, even as the next sentence tell us he surfaces… confusing. But what a bottom it is, full of connection, where us vs them simply doesn’t exist.
And then, there is this passage from Vanna’s point of view:
“Vänna raises herself onto the balls of her feet. She lifts her arms up and outward and feels the breeze between her fingers. She leans back. The bridge turns to sky, the ground to air. How beautiful in their simplicity are the constituent parts of flight. This magic of endless falling that wraps itself around her, this way the body becomes a lightness and the lightness a world. It requires no trajectory, no destination, only a parcel of air and the willingness to never land.”
Falling backwards from a bridge while being pursued can only lead to death, but like the Amir passage, we soon learn she survives. Similaries between the two passages are clear.
Finally, a passage from the evil (but also broken) Colonel speaking to Amir:
‘“But you should know what you are,” he says. “You are the temporary object of their fraudulent outrage, their fraudulent grief. They will march the streets on your behalf, they will write to 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. Today you are the only boy in the world and tomorrow it will be as though you never existed.”’
The reader becomes the ‘they’ of this passage, and we are told that ‘tomorrow’ it will be as though Amir never existed, as indeed the entire After narrative is proven not to exist in the final chapter. We hope that Amir and Vanna have, as we’ve been told, board a boat captained by an old man taking them to a mythical land of their own people who will care for them, at least until we turn the page and realized we’ve been, for want of a better word, duped.
The world is full of ghosts, El Akkad seems to be saying. We are among them. And we have no idea what to do, how to behave, how to feel. There is, in short, no us and them, none at all and we let each other down at every step.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 18, 2022
A beautiful Greek island is not as appealing to tourists when its shores are inundated with immigrants arriving on overloaded, dilapidated boats. Eritreans, Egyptians, Syrians, Palestinians, Ethiopians and Lebanese people all share the dream of escaping poverty, war and political persecution. Colonel Kethros is determined to thwart any of these migrants from living any place but the refugee camp on the island. Regardless, the influx has hurt the local economy.
One of these overcrowded boats sinks during a recent storm and the drowned passengers wash up on the beach. All are dead except a nine-year-old boy whom runs into the woods to avoid capture by the authorities. Vänna spots the boy and decides to help him. She is just 15-years-old herself and at odds with her difficult parents.
El Akkad switches timelines between ‘Before’ and ‘After’. ‘Before’ is the story of Amir’s flight with his family from Syria and his journey on the migrant boat across the Mediterranean; while ‘After’ follows Vänna and Amir as they’re chased by Colonel Kethros and his soldiers. Both are compelling stories and show that all of us are essentially the same—whether apathetic natives and tourists, those whose job is to send the migrants back, or those who give aid at the refugee camp.
One of these overcrowded boats sinks during a recent storm and the drowned passengers wash up on the beach. All are dead except a nine-year-old boy whom runs into the woods to avoid capture by the authorities. Vänna spots the boy and decides to help him. She is just 15-years-old herself and at odds with her difficult parents.
El Akkad switches timelines between ‘Before’ and ‘After’. ‘Before’ is the story of Amir’s flight with his family from Syria and his journey on the migrant boat across the Mediterranean; while ‘After’ follows Vänna and Amir as they’re chased by Colonel Kethros and his soldiers. Both are compelling stories and show that all of us are essentially the same—whether apathetic natives and tourists, those whose job is to send the migrants back, or those who give aid at the refugee camp.
October 17, 2021
4.5 Stars rounded up
Historically, when things haven't gone well for a segment of a population, they've moved elsewhere. Now that the human population is so large, there's seemingly nowhere for migrants to go. Omar El Akkad's story What a Strange Paradise tells the tale of a boatload of Middle Easterners trying to leave their war torn and/or poverty stricken lives to make new lives in the Western world.
The book structure alternates chapters from "Before," the story of now 9 year-old Amir's flight with his family from Syria to Egypt and his accidental boarding a migrant boat headed across the Mediterranean Sea and "After," which follows Amir and 15 year-old Vänna as they hide from the soldiers on the Greek island where Amir has washed ashore.
The epigraphs are important keys to the book. El Akkad gives several nods to Peter Pan, two being Colonel Kethros aligning with Captain Hook and the island scaled beast aligning with Barrie's crocodile. Being familiar with Ambrose Bierce's short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/...) will help you understand the novel's ending. And Vänna's last name Hermes is also significant.
El Akkad has a lot of the characters engage in a type of magical thinking.The migrants imagine the West as open, even welcoming to them. Colonel Kethros re-imagines the migrants as colonizers. And I, as a reader, root for the children to outwit the soldiers looking for them.
Without dwelling on it, El Akkad shows the migrant camp as a mechanism of displacement and dehumaniztion. “The refugees peer from their small, tattered tents to watch because this is what they have become: watchers, honed by captivity into seasoned observers of incremental change.”
This novel also points to the economics and racism of the migration. The lighter skinned passengers seem to have more money and reap the benefit by being above deck and some, for an extra fee, have life jackets. The darker skinned passengers are locked below decks where they are more likely to perish if there is an accident. The human smugglers wipe their consciences clear by saying, "It's just business."
The plot and writing are focused and clear. One of the smugglers tells a group of migrants
“The west you talk about doesn’t exist. It’s a fairytale, a fantasy you sell yourself because the alternative is to admit that you are the least important character in your own story. You invent an entire world because your conscience demands it, you invent good people and bad people and you draw a neat line between them because your simplistic morality demands it. But the two kinds of people in this world are not good and bad, they are engines and fuel. Go ahead, change your country, change your name, change your accent, pull the skin right off your bones, but in their eyes they will always be the engines and you will always, always be fuel.”
As climate change and war force more people from their homes, where will they go? What is our moral obligation to absorb these populations? What Strange Paradise puts a human face on the issue of migration and reminds us that it is a global issue. It is also a memorable story which may stir some of us to action.
Historically, when things haven't gone well for a segment of a population, they've moved elsewhere. Now that the human population is so large, there's seemingly nowhere for migrants to go. Omar El Akkad's story What a Strange Paradise tells the tale of a boatload of Middle Easterners trying to leave their war torn and/or poverty stricken lives to make new lives in the Western world.
The book structure alternates chapters from "Before," the story of now 9 year-old Amir's flight with his family from Syria to Egypt and his accidental boarding a migrant boat headed across the Mediterranean Sea and "After," which follows Amir and 15 year-old Vänna as they hide from the soldiers on the Greek island where Amir has washed ashore.
The epigraphs are important keys to the book. El Akkad gives several nods to Peter Pan, two being Colonel Kethros aligning with Captain Hook and the island scaled beast aligning with Barrie's crocodile. Being familiar with Ambrose Bierce's short story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/...) will help you understand the novel's ending. And Vänna's last name Hermes is also significant.
El Akkad has a lot of the characters engage in a type of magical thinking.The migrants imagine the West as open, even welcoming to them. Colonel Kethros re-imagines the migrants as colonizers. And I, as a reader, root for the children to outwit the soldiers looking for them.
Without dwelling on it, El Akkad shows the migrant camp as a mechanism of displacement and dehumaniztion. “The refugees peer from their small, tattered tents to watch because this is what they have become: watchers, honed by captivity into seasoned observers of incremental change.”
This novel also points to the economics and racism of the migration. The lighter skinned passengers seem to have more money and reap the benefit by being above deck and some, for an extra fee, have life jackets. The darker skinned passengers are locked below decks where they are more likely to perish if there is an accident. The human smugglers wipe their consciences clear by saying, "It's just business."
The plot and writing are focused and clear. One of the smugglers tells a group of migrants
“The west you talk about doesn’t exist. It’s a fairytale, a fantasy you sell yourself because the alternative is to admit that you are the least important character in your own story. You invent an entire world because your conscience demands it, you invent good people and bad people and you draw a neat line between them because your simplistic morality demands it. But the two kinds of people in this world are not good and bad, they are engines and fuel. Go ahead, change your country, change your name, change your accent, pull the skin right off your bones, but in their eyes they will always be the engines and you will always, always be fuel.”
As climate change and war force more people from their homes, where will they go? What is our moral obligation to absorb these populations? What Strange Paradise puts a human face on the issue of migration and reminds us that it is a global issue. It is also a memorable story which may stir some of us to action.
April 20, 2024
4.5 stars
What Strange Paradise
Omar El Akkad
📖 What Strange Paradise examines the refugee crisis through the lens of a nine-year-old Syrian boy named Amir, and his unlikely companion, a teenager named Vänna.
💭 This poignant, thought-provoking novel beautifully and achingly details the turmoil of life for migrants fleeing conflict. Told with nuance and sensitivity, through the intertwining narratives of Amir and Vänna, El Akkad explores the impacts of displacement, injustice, and prejudice, but also empathy, companionship, and resilience. These characters will worm their way into hearts and minds, and will linger long after the final page. This is a must read!
📌 Available now!
What Strange Paradise
Omar El Akkad
📖 What Strange Paradise examines the refugee crisis through the lens of a nine-year-old Syrian boy named Amir, and his unlikely companion, a teenager named Vänna.
💭 This poignant, thought-provoking novel beautifully and achingly details the turmoil of life for migrants fleeing conflict. Told with nuance and sensitivity, through the intertwining narratives of Amir and Vänna, El Akkad explores the impacts of displacement, injustice, and prejudice, but also empathy, companionship, and resilience. These characters will worm their way into hearts and minds, and will linger long after the final page. This is a must read!
📌 Available now!
March 4, 2022
What a sad, lyrical and resonant story. Not quite sure what else I can say about this, until it has sunk it a bit more. But I do already know, it won't be a book I'll be quick to forget.
November 28, 2023
3.5
The opening scene of this novel powerfully evokes the 2015 image of a young Syrian boy washed up on a beach in Bodrum, Turkey, a victim of the refugee crisis that continues to this day. Like the refugees in this novel, these people were also fleeing the fighting in Syria and were bound for the Greek island of Kos.
For anyone that has spent any time dwelling on this imagery then this novel will pack a hefty punch as it gives this boy ( and thousands like him) a backstory, a family, a history and perhaps painfully, a future. Its a beautifully handled and sensitive refugee story.
Unfortunately some heavy handedness inevitably shows up in the form of a none too subtle "bad-guy" and things seemed rushed to a cinematic end.
I did like the final twist -which loops back nicely to the beginning of the novel and hopefully pricks the readers conscious all over again.
A worthwhile novel even if not as perfectly executed as I might have liked.
The opening scene of this novel powerfully evokes the 2015 image of a young Syrian boy washed up on a beach in Bodrum, Turkey, a victim of the refugee crisis that continues to this day. Like the refugees in this novel, these people were also fleeing the fighting in Syria and were bound for the Greek island of Kos.
For anyone that has spent any time dwelling on this imagery then this novel will pack a hefty punch as it gives this boy ( and thousands like him) a backstory, a family, a history and perhaps painfully, a future. Its a beautifully handled and sensitive refugee story.
Unfortunately some heavy handedness inevitably shows up in the form of a none too subtle "bad-guy" and things seemed rushed to a cinematic end.
I did like the final twist -which loops back nicely to the beginning of the novel and hopefully pricks the readers conscious all over again.
A worthwhile novel even if not as perfectly executed as I might have liked.
March 15, 2025
Listened to this one. Really disliked the narrator.
November 14, 2021
“The West you talk about doesn’t exist. It’s a fairy tale, a fantasy you sell yourself because the alternative is to admit that you’re the last important character in your own story.”
Recently, a fellow booklover proposed that 2021 should be dubbed the year of the story, with many novels highlighting the importance of stories in these turbulent times.
Perhaps no story is as poignant as the tale of the global refugees who give up their homes and their families and risk life and limb to embrace a promising new life. Yet often, they exchange one nightmare for another, as they arrive on new shores to find themselves hunted, rounded up, and despised.
Amir is a young Syrian boy who surreptiously follows his Quiet Uncle, now his stepfather, onto a ship, not quite understanding that they are leaving their homeland. The ill-equipped and dilapidated ship is filled with Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese – all kinds of oppressed people on their way to the Greek island of Kos, where they will eventually head west.
As the book jacket reveals, he is the only person who survives this tumultuous passage. But Colonel Kethros has made a vow to preserve law and order, dispel illegal immigrants, and keep the island safe for rich tourists who don’t want a little thing like human rights to interfere with their long-awaited vacations. The only one who can save Amir is a young local girl Vanna, a few years older than him, who is determined to have his story end happily.
The novel reads almost like a fable – two innocents adrift in a world of cynical people who believe that the only two kinds of people in the world are engines and fuel – and fuel is always dispensable. Alternating chapters depict the “before” and the “after” and answer the questions, “How did Amir end up on the boat and how does he survive? And, once he does survive the journey, will he survive the destination?”
Beautifully written and thought-provoking, What Strange Paradise deserves the prestigious Scotiabank Giller prize it recently won.
Recently, a fellow booklover proposed that 2021 should be dubbed the year of the story, with many novels highlighting the importance of stories in these turbulent times.
Perhaps no story is as poignant as the tale of the global refugees who give up their homes and their families and risk life and limb to embrace a promising new life. Yet often, they exchange one nightmare for another, as they arrive on new shores to find themselves hunted, rounded up, and despised.
Amir is a young Syrian boy who surreptiously follows his Quiet Uncle, now his stepfather, onto a ship, not quite understanding that they are leaving their homeland. The ill-equipped and dilapidated ship is filled with Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese – all kinds of oppressed people on their way to the Greek island of Kos, where they will eventually head west.
As the book jacket reveals, he is the only person who survives this tumultuous passage. But Colonel Kethros has made a vow to preserve law and order, dispel illegal immigrants, and keep the island safe for rich tourists who don’t want a little thing like human rights to interfere with their long-awaited vacations. The only one who can save Amir is a young local girl Vanna, a few years older than him, who is determined to have his story end happily.
The novel reads almost like a fable – two innocents adrift in a world of cynical people who believe that the only two kinds of people in the world are engines and fuel – and fuel is always dispensable. Alternating chapters depict the “before” and the “after” and answer the questions, “How did Amir end up on the boat and how does he survive? And, once he does survive the journey, will he survive the destination?”
Beautifully written and thought-provoking, What Strange Paradise deserves the prestigious Scotiabank Giller prize it recently won.
December 4, 2021
“The two kinds of people in this world aren’t good and bad — they’re engines and fuel.”
9 year old Amir Utu washes up on shore amidst a mass of shipwrecked bodies, distended with seawater. Sprawled facedown, arms outstretched he is surrounded by the wreckage of the boat he once sat on. Police pull caution tape along the walkway that leads to the beach that lies in the shadow of a luxury hotel. The guest rumble about their ruined day, now confined to the hotel grounds. There are angry requests for refunds.
The boy opens his eyes and sees two men approach in baggy white containment suits. He runs.
Beautifully written with a spare storyline bisected into Before and After. After, we see Amir lost on this new island, helped by 15 year old Vanna. Before, we find out how Amir finds himself aboard the Calypso, crowded among the other refugees. They remain hopeful, armed with newly minted Western names, wielding crucifixes and memorizing mantras in English: "Hello. I am pregnant. I will have a baby on April twenty-eight. I need hospital and doctor to have safe baby. Please help."
It's a simple story, that is devastating in its little details.
9 year old Amir Utu washes up on shore amidst a mass of shipwrecked bodies, distended with seawater. Sprawled facedown, arms outstretched he is surrounded by the wreckage of the boat he once sat on. Police pull caution tape along the walkway that leads to the beach that lies in the shadow of a luxury hotel. The guest rumble about their ruined day, now confined to the hotel grounds. There are angry requests for refunds.
The boy opens his eyes and sees two men approach in baggy white containment suits. He runs.
Beautifully written with a spare storyline bisected into Before and After. After, we see Amir lost on this new island, helped by 15 year old Vanna. Before, we find out how Amir finds himself aboard the Calypso, crowded among the other refugees. They remain hopeful, armed with newly minted Western names, wielding crucifixes and memorizing mantras in English: "Hello. I am pregnant. I will have a baby on April twenty-eight. I need hospital and doctor to have safe baby. Please help."
It's a simple story, that is devastating in its little details.
September 18, 2021
Immensely frustrating. Merely writing about a worthy topic is not enough. The characters in this are so vapid and thin and their motivations are quick to crumble. Much like his first novel, American War, the premise is good but the execution severely lacking.
July 26, 2021
3.5
Beautiful prose but not sure if El Akkad really does anything new with the refugee story. I expected something more unique, especially following the incredibly original AMERICAN WAR.
Beautiful prose but not sure if El Akkad really does anything new with the refugee story. I expected something more unique, especially following the incredibly original AMERICAN WAR.
December 10, 2021
Prepare for discomfort, as this is a hard-hitting migrant story. The physical hardships of escaping a dangerous country to get to Western asylum eschews any glossing here, the ship at sea that takes the migrants may even make you queasy. All my senses were alive; I could even smell the mixed pungencies, and my heart was pierced with needles. ”Such were the myriad mechanics of initiation into the oldest tribe, the tribe of endless leaving."
Amir is a nine-year-old boy from Syria on the migrant ship, the only one alive when the shipwreck occurs near an unnamed tourist island, rendering it almost myth-like. He is rescued by Vänna, a local girl a bit older than him. Their sibling-like relationship evolves over time and will endear you to their struggle. The chapters alternate between “Before” the shipwreck and “After” he lands and is with Vänna. Complex prose often showcasing what seems like a reductive storyline, but just keep going and you shall be rewarded.
Amir’s escape began long before his maritime passage, into the comic books of Zaytoon and Zaytoona. What captivated him was that the town always reset at the beginning of every new story, a way that any damage was mended. “…the thing that most amazed him was the sheer lightness of such a repairable world.” Amir wanted to live lightly, and hope was possible on a new and beautiful island.
The villain in this tale is the colonel doing his job on the island, as he and his team search desperately for the boy that they knew got away. He had past experience in the field of misery, as a soldier trying to defend his troops, and failing, losing a leg in the process. He tried to balance his mind and body in the aftermath, “…unlearning the stubborn, seething rage he felt at both the people who’d sent him to the killing fields and the people he’d failed to defend. How he hated the people he’d failed to defend.”
This is a novel whose final page corrects, or turns around, every mistake in plot pivots that I thought the author was making. I don’t want to say too much, other than stick with it, and trust the prose, which is both muscular and mature, to denote the author’s talent. You will be satisfied and remove all doubt about his abilities. I was all set to thrash El Akkad’s newest novel’s plot points as puerile, although the story was arresting and unputdownable, despite that!
Plot turns, and anything that mechanically pivots the plot gave me a few eye rolls (schmaltzy scenes at intervals), but by the end, you will see what a brilliant novel he wrote, an emotional powerhouse (that I hope nobody tries to make a movie of or series). What kept me going was the surging and poetic prose, which contained worlds--every sentence an expansion of ideas, and vivid scenery, as well as arresting characters. I looked over some of the stunning passages I highlighted, and their potency was even more trenchant when read in full context.
Every page will contain morsels that are tragically beautiful in its descriptions, philosophical ideas rendered under stress, and empathy for each character, and some of their sad outlooks.
“The West you talk about doesn’t exist. It’s a fairytale, a fantasy you sell yourself because the alternative is to admit that you’re the least important character in your own story…your simplistic morality demands it. But the two kinds of people in the world aren’t good and bad--they’re engines and fuel…change your country, change your name, but in their eyes they will always be engines and you will always be fuel.” Intrepid, frank, and fully charged, this story of survival will remain with you long after you close the final page.
Amir is a nine-year-old boy from Syria on the migrant ship, the only one alive when the shipwreck occurs near an unnamed tourist island, rendering it almost myth-like. He is rescued by Vänna, a local girl a bit older than him. Their sibling-like relationship evolves over time and will endear you to their struggle. The chapters alternate between “Before” the shipwreck and “After” he lands and is with Vänna. Complex prose often showcasing what seems like a reductive storyline, but just keep going and you shall be rewarded.
Amir’s escape began long before his maritime passage, into the comic books of Zaytoon and Zaytoona. What captivated him was that the town always reset at the beginning of every new story, a way that any damage was mended. “…the thing that most amazed him was the sheer lightness of such a repairable world.” Amir wanted to live lightly, and hope was possible on a new and beautiful island.
The villain in this tale is the colonel doing his job on the island, as he and his team search desperately for the boy that they knew got away. He had past experience in the field of misery, as a soldier trying to defend his troops, and failing, losing a leg in the process. He tried to balance his mind and body in the aftermath, “…unlearning the stubborn, seething rage he felt at both the people who’d sent him to the killing fields and the people he’d failed to defend. How he hated the people he’d failed to defend.”
This is a novel whose final page corrects, or turns around, every mistake in plot pivots that I thought the author was making. I don’t want to say too much, other than stick with it, and trust the prose, which is both muscular and mature, to denote the author’s talent. You will be satisfied and remove all doubt about his abilities. I was all set to thrash El Akkad’s newest novel’s plot points as puerile, although the story was arresting and unputdownable, despite that!
Plot turns, and anything that mechanically pivots the plot gave me a few eye rolls (schmaltzy scenes at intervals), but by the end, you will see what a brilliant novel he wrote, an emotional powerhouse (that I hope nobody tries to make a movie of or series). What kept me going was the surging and poetic prose, which contained worlds--every sentence an expansion of ideas, and vivid scenery, as well as arresting characters. I looked over some of the stunning passages I highlighted, and their potency was even more trenchant when read in full context.
Every page will contain morsels that are tragically beautiful in its descriptions, philosophical ideas rendered under stress, and empathy for each character, and some of their sad outlooks.
“The West you talk about doesn’t exist. It’s a fairytale, a fantasy you sell yourself because the alternative is to admit that you’re the least important character in your own story…your simplistic morality demands it. But the two kinds of people in the world aren’t good and bad--they’re engines and fuel…change your country, change your name, but in their eyes they will always be engines and you will always be fuel.” Intrepid, frank, and fully charged, this story of survival will remain with you long after you close the final page.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,067 reviews