Download The New Odyssey: The Story of the Twenty-First-Century Refugee Crisis AudioBook Free
In the humane tradition of Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers comes a searing profile of the international refugee crisis. On your day of his son's 14th birthday, Hashem al-Souki lay down somewhere in the Mediterranean, crammed in a solid wood dinghy. His family was relatively safe - at least for the time being - in Egypt, where they had only just settled after fleeing their war-torn Damascus home three years prior. Traversing these unforgiving waters and the treacherous landscape that would follow was worth the trim chance of obtaining a safe home for his children in Sweden. If he failed, at least he'd fail alone. Hashem's tale is tragically common, as needy victims continue steadily to embark on lethal journeys in search of freedom. Traffic monitoring the harrowing encounters of these brave refugees, The New Odyssey finally illuminates the shadowy networks which may have facilitated the largest forced exodus since the end of World War II. The Guardian's first-ever migration correspondent, Patrick Kingsley has traveled through 17 countries to place an indelible face on this overwhelming devastation. Embedding himself alongside the refugees, Kingsley reenacts their airline flight with hundreds of men and women across the choppy Mediterranean in the expectations of better understanding who helps or hinders their way to salvation. Through the starving migrants who motivate through sandstorms with children strapped with their backs to the exploitive bad guys who prey on them, from the smugglers who dangerously stretch out the limits of their cargo space to the volunteers who uproot their own lives to hand out water bottles, what emerges is a kaleidoscope of mankind in the wake of tragedy. By all together tracing the narrative of Hashem, who endured the trek not once but twice, Kingsley memorably creates a compassionate, visceral portrait of the mass migration in both its epic range and its heartbreaking specificity. Revealing the realities of the modern-day odyssey as well as the moral shortcomings obvious in our own indifference, the result is an essential call to arms and an unprecedented exploration of a global we too often choose not to know.
