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Omar el akkad5/30/2023 ![]() It reminds us of the human stories behind headlines and statistics, and gives us one of the most memorable children characters, whose story adds urgency and poignancy to that ‘awfully big adventure’ stated by Peter Pan. ![]() “What an imaginative, touching, and necessary novel Omar El Akkad has brought to us. I read this in one sitting, my heart pounding the whole way-in a strange paradise, you might say. “It is one thing to put a human face on a migrant crisis and another to do so in so compelling a way that a reader simply cannot put your book down. I want to live in a world where the beauty of strangers is a heartsong.” I want to read this book every single day. This novel-following a boy who survives a refugee passage, and a girl whose homeland feels fractured-dares to unite us on the shore of shared human experience, and redefines hope in the face of despair. “What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad just resuscitated my heart. In his first novel, American War, Omar El Akkad upended the world order with a long-running civil war in a future America, precisely describing the violence and miseries he had witnessed as a. The book devastates and uplifts, somehow, and we are not left with hope-that isn’t the point-but asked to witness, to see what is here, with clarity, and with fullness of heart.” Here we get the wondrousness of children set in sharp relief against a backdrop of the all too common dehumanization then dismissal of refugees everywhere. ![]() Omar El Akkad writes with such emotional precision, power, and grace. It is tremendously written, propulsive as it is expansive as it is granular in its specificities. ![]() “What Strange Paradise is by turns tender and brutal in its truths. ![]()
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