What Strange Paradise

Omar El Akkad — 2021

"More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another over-filled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives in their homelands. And only one has made the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials but of Vänna: a teenage girl, native to the island, who lives inside her own sense of homelessness in a place and among people she has come to disdain. And though 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 of 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 time: of empathy and indifference, of hope and despair--and of the way each of those things can blind us to reality, or guide us to a better one"--

Reviews

Fraser Simons@frasersimons

Jun 9, 2022

A realistic depiction of a refugee crisis tucked into an extremely loose Peter Pan telling. Amir, or David as he calls himself when he arrives, washes up onto the shore close to a resort town. When Vänna finds him, she helps him as best she can, though she’s young, and despite a significant language barrier. Throughout, Amir is tested in his ability to trust his fate to a stranger, and Vänna has to decide how far she will go to help him. Helping him may require more of her than she has it in her to give. The narrative shifts every chapter to before he washes ashore and after, culminating when the central tension of the story is resolved. The before chapters tend to be quite short and do a good job of stoking the pacing when needed and to plant foreshadowing and doubt as to Amirs ultimate fate. “If you think the black market is bad, wait until you see the white market.” The fairytale of going to a western culture is dispelled when people share stories of disillusionment and hardship, rather than find a land of opportunity and plenty. People have sold this as the retelling of PP, but I think that evokes some plot beats that this mostly doesn’t have and isn’t interested in reenacting. The large movements of the story, as I know it anyway, are there. A boy arriving in Neverland as western culture is particularly great as a subversion. Hook as a disaffected embodiment of an institution as an officer tracking and corralling the refugees away from the resort people, lest their dollars be spent elsewhere. Vänna too, parallels a Peter Pan character well, though the characterization is wildly different, and to better effect, I think. The prose are literary in structure; meatier paragraphs than commercial fiction and more articulate in its realistic depictions of dead bodies and the refugee story components. There are some elegant turns of phrase and a few extremely quotable lines, the prose otherwise though, get out of the way. I prefer description and specificity and a more active prose work, and ended up chewing through this book in three hours. For me, there wasn’t anything to sink into and get lost in. The plot was predictable. Characters felt fairly concrete, but not vivid. This is a vehicle more of interesting ideas and subversions spotted from the window, rather than a compelling place to be in on that journey. It’ll get you there and it’s worth seeing where you’re going, but you will also remember the uncomfortable, bumpy ride, too.