What Strange Paradise (2021) by Omar Akkad

Book Review

What Strange Paradise (2021)

by Omar Akkad

  I really enjoyed Omar Akkad's debut novel, American War, a well imagined tale of future dystopia in post-Civil War 2 America. For his second novel he's chosen a less genre milieu: Present day coastal Mediterranean Europe, under siege from would be immigrants from the African side of the sea.  The main protagonist is Amir, a refugee from war-torn Syria by way of Egypt who is the sole survivor of the wreck of the Calypso, an overloaded smuggling boat.  His perilous state is rendered slightly less so by Vanna, a girl of the same age as Amir, who takes him under her wing and tries to help him.   Help,  in this book, means getting off the island, and that is what Amir and Vanna go about doing.

  The narrative flashes between the present day flight from danger is interspersed with the story of Amir's flight from Syria and trip across the Mediterranean.   Clearly, Akkad is in the business of generating empathy for Amir and his kindred spirits, who are too often dehumanized in the debate over southern European immigration.  Personally, as someone who works on the southern border of the United States defending people accused of illegal entry, alien smuggling etc, Amir's struggles seem fairly mundane- nothing I haven't heard a thousand times before, with the possible exception of the horrific wreck of his smuggling vessel. 

   Akkad is not without sympathy for his villains- a theme in his work that continues from American War.  By doing this he encourages empathy for all sides, not just the folks he favors.