What Strange Paradise

<p><b>&lsquo;Deserves to be an instant classic. I haven&rsquo;t loved a book this much in a long time . . . <i>What Strange Paradise </i>. . . reads as a parable for our times . . . Such beautiful writing . . . This is an extraordinary book.&rsquo; </b><b>&ndash; <i>The </i></b><b><i>New York Times</i></b><br><br><b>From the widely acclaimed author of <i>American War</i>, Omar El Akkad, a beautifully written, unrelentingly dramatic and profoundly moving novel that brings the global refugee crisis down to the level of a child&rsquo;s eyes.</b><br><br>More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another over-filled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too-many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives in their homelands. And only one had made the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials, but of Vänna: a teenage girl, native to the island, who lives inside her own sense of homelessness in a place and among people she has come to disdain. And though Vänna and Amir are complete strangers and don&rsquo;t speak a common language, Vänna determines to do whatever it takes to save him.<br><br>In alternating chapters, we learn the story of Amir&rsquo;s life and of how he came to be on the ship; and we follow the duo as they make their way towards a vision of safety. But as the novel unfurls, we begin to understand that this is not merely the story of two children finding their way through a hostile world. Omar El Akkad&rsquo;s <i>What Strange Paradise</i> is the story of our collective moment in this time: of empathy and indifference, of hope and despair &ndash; and of the way each of those things can blind us to reality, or guide us to a better one.</p>