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WORK TITLE: The New Odyssey
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BIRTHDATE: c. 1990
WEBSITE: http://www.patrickkingsley.co.uk/
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http://www.npr.org/2017/01/15/509984918/the-new-odyssey-allows-migrants-stories-to-humanize-the-crisis
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born c. 1990.
EDUCATION:Received degrees from National Council for the Training of Journalists and Cambridge University.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Guardian, Egypt and migration correspondent; New York Times, foreign correspondent and Turkey bureau chief, 2017-.
AWARDS:Frontline Award, for work in journalism; British Journalism Award, 2015, for work in journalism.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
As a journalist, Patrick Kingsley has built a prolific career. His first journalistic position was with the Guardian (London, England), for which he serves as a migration correspondent. He is also affiliated with the New York Times as a foreign correspondent. Kingsley’s efforts in his field have earned him various awards, including a British Press Award nomination and British Journalism Award. His first book, How to Be Danish: A Short Journey into the Mysterious Heart of Denmark is a travel book that delves into Danish culture.
The New Odyssey: The Story of the Twenty-First-Century Refugee Crisis is Kingsley’s second book and is informed by his journalism work. It showcases the tales of refugees from around the world and their attempts to adjust to life in the countries that have taken them in. The book tells its tale not just on a personal front but also in terms of the political inner workings of the countries offering sanctuary to the refugees Kingsley speaks with. In the process, he shines a light on the flaws and holes present in many of these countries’ foreign policies and the ways in which the countries could better help refugees entering them for safety.
Kingsley presents the stories of each refugee he speaks to in detail, from the regimes and decaying conditions of the countries they’ve escaped to their hazardous efforts to make it to the countries they now live in. Many of the anecdotes featured within the book are fraught with risk and suffering. Kingsley also delves into the state of their lives in their new homes and what they are doing with their newfound freedom. As a reaction to the less-than-stellar migration conditions offered by many places of refuge, some of Kingsley’s interviewees devote themselves to helping others arrive safely in ways their new governments cannot and do not. He also speaks with smugglers who risk breaking the law for the sake of offering escaped peoples a second chance at freedom.
BookPage reviewer Pricilla Kipp remarked: “The story that unfolds is intimate, terrifying and ultimately heroic.” Raymond Pun, a contributor to Booklist, recommended The New Odyssey to “readers interested in global politics, migration and immigration studies, and current affairs.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the book “a powerful firsthand account of a crisis that will continue to receive even more attention in the years to come.” A reviewer in Publishers Weekly referred to The New Odyssey as “a moving and timely book that presents the crisis of the subtitle in both microcosm and macrocosm.” Christian Science Monitor contributor James Norton commented: “By looking at warm-hearted rescuers as well as cold-blooded smugglers, and possible solutions as well as grave problems, Kingsley finds the good—and the hope—in a truly massive challenge to our collective humanity.”
Lauren LeBlanc, a reviewer on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website, wrote: “Patrick Kingsley has written a lucid and unflinching book that captures the ripples of the largest wave of mass migration since World War II.” She added: “‘The New Odyssey’ is a story that you cannot avoid.” New York Journal of Books contributor Elayne Clift stated: “Kingsley has done a great service by painting a portrait of what is happening as desperate people continue to risk death to escape tyranny while the world responds in a totally inadequate way.” A writer in Kirkus Reviews commented: “Kingsley renders the quality and complexity of life in Denmark with an outsider’s fresh perspective and a journalist’s sharp instincts.” A contributor to the Danish Design Review blog remarked: “I found his comments and observations not only wide ranging and perceptive but generally very appreciative or even affectionate.” Bookbag website writer Robert James expressed that the book is “highly recommended to anyone looking to gain an insight into a wonderful country.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, November 1, 2016, Raymond Pun, review of The New Odyssey: The Story of the Twenty-First-Century Refugee Crisis, p. 5.
BookPage, January, 2017, Pricilla Kipp, review of The New Odyssey, p. 24.
Christian Science Monitor, January 10, 2017, James Norton, “‘The New Odyssey’ Follows the Men, Women, Children Streaming to Europe,” review of The New Odyssey.
Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2013, review of How to Be Danish: A Short Journey into the Mysterious Heart of Denmark; October 15, 2016, review of The New Odyssey.
New Yorker, March 27, 2017, Ligaya Mishan, “Briefly Noted,” review of The New Odyssey, p. 71.
Publishers Weekly, November 4, 2013, review of How to Be Danish, p. 57; September 19, 2016, review of The New Odyssey, p. 59.
ONLINE
Bookbag, http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/ (November 1, 2012), Robert James, review of How to Be Danish.
Danish Design Review, http://danishdesignreview.com/ (November 14, 2013), review of How to Be Danish.
New York Journal of Books, http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/ (June 11, 2017), Elayne Clift, review of The New Odyssey.
NPR, http://www.npr.org/ (January 15, 2017), Michel Martin, “‘The New Odyssey’ Allows Migrants Stories to Humanize the Crisis,” author interview.
Patrick Kingsley Website, http://www.patrickkingsley.co.uk (June 28, 2017), author profile.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch Online, http://www.stltoday.com/ (January 7, 2017), Lauren LeBlanc, review of The New Odyssey.
'The New Odyssey' Allows Migrants Stories To Humanize The Crisis
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January 15, 20176:05 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
The Guardian's Migration Correspondent Patrick Kingsley's book The New Odyssey follows several migrants on their journeys from war-torn countries in the Middle East and Africa to Europe.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
By now, if you have followed the news at all, then you surely know about the worldwide migration crisis. You've heard the numbers. More than 1.4 million people have crossed the Mediterranean since 2014 alone fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa. You've surely seen bits and pieces of the human story as well - the heartbreaking photo of the drowned Syrian boy, reports of shipwrecks that have killed hundreds of other migrants attempting the crossing. The sheer scale of the story makes it a difficult one to handle.
But Patrick Kingsley migration correspondent for the U.K. news outlet The Guardian decided to try in his new book "The New Odyssey," he takes readers through every step of the journey from homeland to safety in Europe, interviewing refugees, smugglers, aid workers and everybody else he can think of connected to the story. And Patrick Kingsley joins us now from NPR's bureau in New York City. Patrick Kingsley, thank you so much for speaking with us.
PATRICK KINGSLEY: Thanks for having me on the show.
MARTIN: As we mentioned, this is such a huge story, and you take on all aspects of it in the book, but mostly through the story of Hashem Alsouki, a Syrian who fled the civil war with his family. What is it about his story that drew you to him to kind of form the book around him?
KINGSLEY: Well, first of all, Hashem's such a sympathetic man. He's a civil servant. He's 40. He's got three kids, a lovely wife who's a teacher. He just feels like an every man. And it was stories like his that I felt were best able to humanize, to ground the vastness of what was going on.
MARTIN: Why did he decide - to tell people who haven't had a chance to read the book yet - why did he decide to make the crossing?
KINGSLEY: So he was living quite a quiet life before the revolution erupted in Syria in 2011, and then suddenly war overcame his country. And he got sucked into it. His home was destroyed in the fighting, and he was also arrested for several months for political reasons by the government in Syria. And he was tortured for several months, and - I'm sorry to say - electrocuted for days on end. And he then decided to leave with his family for Egypt which is where I met him, and life there was actually very tough as well because Hashem found it very hard to get jobs.
He was kidnapped by a man - came to be a Secret Service officer from the Egyptian regime. And it became very clear that this wasn't a safe place to be. And for that reason, he tried to go with his family by boat in one of these leaking boats that depart from the shores of North Africa towards Italy. And that was the reason I met him because he actually didn't make it onto that boat, and he was arrested with his family, his three young kids.
And had they got on that boat that they hoped would take them to Italy, they would have drowned because that boat went down a few days later killing - we think - between 300 and 500 people. And the staggering thing was that a few months later, Hashem said to me that he wanted to try this journey that had almost killed him the year before again. And that was the point when I asked if I might be able to follow him and chronicle his journey.
MARTIN: I need to - you to find a way to describe what part of that journey is like, and it's going to be difficult to do because there is a level of detail that you provide in the book about the exposure that people have to other people's bodily functions, for example, on these crossings that I'm not sure people are prepared to hear. So can you just give us - can you just find some way to describe what these crossings are actually like?
KINGSLEY: Well, the crossings are one of the most traumatic experiences that you could possibly imagine. Most people are crammed into relatively small fishing trawlers that are only meant to hold a crew of 15 or 20. But, instead, they're crammed with hundreds and hundreds of people at least three hundred and sometimes up to 700, and so no one even has enough floor space on the deck to stretch out and sleep.
There are so many people on the boat that it's very hard to reach the few toilets that there are onboard to put it lightly. And I would ask listeners to use their imaginations about what people have to do instead. And if they need to eat, you hope that the smugglers that you've paid - maybe $2,000 to make this journey - have enough food. But often, they don't. It's not like you're going on a luxury ocean cruise. This is one of the world's worst journeys that you can go on and second only I think to the journey that thousands of migrants make through the desert before they even reach the shores of the Mediterranean. And that's also described in my book.
MARTIN: Now, you combine the human stories here. You tell these stories focusing on Hashem and his family's journey and other journeys of people through the Sahara. But you also talk to - you also sort of describe some of the policy decisions that have led to this. Now, I think many people are of the view that this - there's really nothing that could have been done here to forestall this short of a political solution in Syria. It's your contention that that's just not true, am I right?
KINGSLEY: Well, my findings having interviewed hundreds of refugees is that had countries like the USA been more proactive about setting up resettlement programs, fewer people would have sought to move by irregular means. As I've said in the book, people move whether we like it or not. And the best way to respond to that is to try and manage that flow rather than to pretend that we can stop it entirely.
MARTIN: In the course of reporting the book, you know, you, you know, went to the airport, got on a plane and flew to a place that literally hundreds of people had died trying to make it there just as you did just in the course of an hour. And you were - I noted throughout the book that you were struck by this again and again, and I wonder if that experience of seeing people struggle so mightily to achieve freedom of movement that you were born to, I wonder if that's changed you in some way.
KINGSLEY: It just reminded me of how privileged I've been in my life and how privilege many of us who live in North America or in Europe are compared to people who are actually very similar to us but have drawn the short straw in the lottery where they were born. As you mentioned, I flew from - in one week, for example, Egypt to Turkey to Jordan to government-held Libya to rebel-held Libya to Tunisia and Malta, Italy, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and then to the U.K.
And in that time in which I'd crossed nine or 10 borders, around 1,200 people drowned just trying to cross one. And it's when you realize things like that. And when you are on a border with people who cannot move any further because there is a fence, and you know that you can leave that space as soon as you like within five minutes if you need to. You just realize how the world is very unfair.
MARTIN: What - is it all right if we ask what happened to Hashem?
KINGSLEY: Hashem does survive the sea journey, but the book ends without resolution, I'd say, because his family was still stuck in Egypt waiting for their family reunification application to be processed. And I'm sorry to say that still is the case. They're still waiting nearly two years later.
MARTIN: Patrick Kingsley is migration correspondent for the U.K.-based news outlet The Guardian. His new book is called "The New Odyssey: The Story Of The Twenty-First Century Refugee Crisis." It's out now. Mr. Kingsley, thank you so much for speaking with us.
KINGSLEY: Thank you for having me.
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Patrick Kingsley is an award-winning author and foreign correspondent for the New York Times. He joined the Times in 2017 as the acting Turkey bureau chief.
Patrick was the Guardian’s first-ever migration correspondent, and was named foreign affairs journalist of the year at the 2015 British Journalism Awards. His book about the European refugee crisis, based on reportage from 17 countries along the migration trail, has been translated into 10 languages. Patrick has lectured on migration at Oxford University, giving the 2016 Harrell-Bond Lecture, an annual address that has previously been made by the heads of both the United Nations, and the United Nations refugee agency.
Patrick is a former winner of the Frontline award for print journalism, and was runner-up in the foreign correspondent category at the British Press Awards. He was previously the Guardian’s Egypt correspondent.
Patrick has reported from more than 30 countries, including Denmark, where he wrote his first book, a travelogue about Danish culture called How to be Danish. The New York Times said it was “fascinating”, the Wall Street Journal “delightful”, and it was a travel book of the month at The Sunday Times.
On the migration beat, Patrick is proudest of this story about one man’s journey from Syria to Sweden, as well as his four-part, year-long investigation into people-smuggling in i) Libya; ii) Egypt; iii) Turkey; and iv) Niger.
In Egypt, Patrick won awards for his investigations into a state-led massacre in Cairo; a secret jail in Ismailia; the gassing to death of 37 prisoners inside a police truck; and this assessment of the bloodiest week in modern Egyptian history.
Patrick is 27. He has a first in English Literature from Cambridge University, and a diploma in journalism from the National Council for the Training of Journalists. He is currently based in Istanbul, and has also lived in Cairo and Amman.
You can download his PR photo here (credit: Tom Kingsley).
Briefly Noted
Ligaya Mishan
The New Yorker. 93.6 (Mar. 27, 2017): p71.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Conde Nast Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Conde Nast Publications, Inc.
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Briefly Noted
The New Odyssey, by Patrick Kingsley (Liveright). This chronicle of the refugee crisis-since 2014, more than a million people from Africa, the Middle East, and beyond have tried to reach Europe-argues that it is largely a manufactured disaster, the result of insufficient political will. The author accompanies migrants on perilous journeys across mountains, deserts, and the Mediterranean. He interviews traffickers, volunteers, and overwhelmed bureaucrats. His lead character is a Syrian refugee, Hashem al-Souki, who makes a harrowing boat trip from Egypt to Italy, navigates Europe by foot and rail, and seeks asylum in Sweden. As seen through Hashem's tired, tense eyes, the Continent is a place of mystery and danger. To avoid detection, he makes a show of reading local newspapers in each town he passes through.
The New Odyssey
Pricilla Kipp
BookPage. (Jan. 2017): p24.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 BookPage
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THE NEW ODYSSEY
By Patrick
Kingsley
Liveright
$26.95, 368 pages
ISBN 9781631492556
eBook available
IMMIGRATION
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
The stark numbers continue to arrive in our daily headlines: 5 million refugees fleeing Syria since the Arab Spring began there in 2011, 1,000 a day arriving by sea to the Greek islands. Germany and Sweden are swamped with new arrivals, while Hungary closes its borders. Nine hundred refugees cram onto a fragile boat that capsizes in the Mediterranean, trying to reach Italy. Seventy suffocate in the back of an Austrian truck. A drowned toddler washes up on a Turkish beach. The world looks on these people and describes them as everything from opportunistic job seekers to desperate asylum seekers, but nothing stops the flow of refugees. Who are they?
In The New Odyssey, journalist Patrick Kingsley, an award-winning migration correspondent for the U.K.'s Guardian, chronicles the journeys of the people behind the numbers. Hashem al-Souki is Kingsley's reluctant Homer, forced to leave Syria in 2012 to escape imprisonment, torture and death. He hopes to lead his wife and three sons to a secure future in Sweden.
Kingsley provides Hashem with a camera and a journal. The story that unfolds is intimate, terrifying and ultimately heroic. Along the way are ruthless smugglers, corrupt politicians, courageous locals, dedicated international aid workers, surprising mercies and deep despair. Facebook pages like "The Safe and Free Route to Asylum for Refugees" and GPS markers are the new lures and travel guides--if there is cell service and a way to charge a phone. Friends and families left behind must pay smugglers they cannot trust.
Three years later, Hashem is still wondering what the future holds. His journey is a sharply etched reflection of the disparate refugee policies of the European Union, Canada and the U.S. The future it foretells may be what Kingsley calls "an abdication of decency" in a humanitarian crisis not seen since World War II.
The New Odyssey: The Story of the Twenty-First-Century Refugee Crisis
Raymond Pun
Booklist. 113.5 (Nov. 1, 2016): p5.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
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The New Odyssey: The Story of the Twenty-First-Century Refugee Crisis. By Patrick Kingsley. Jan. 2017. 368p. illus. Norton/Liveright, $26.95 (97816314925561.362.87094.
As the first migration correspondent for the Guardian, Kingsley intimately covers the issues, struggles, and stories of migrant refugees. Here, in his first book, Kingsley closely follows and documents the direct experiences in 2015 of refugees from countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, and Nigeria as they navigate the complex political systems of leaving one country for another, seeking safety, security, and opportunity. Kingsley captures the lives of several individuals and their backgrounds, triumphs, and tragedies, and he maps out a compelling narrative of this ongoing refugee crisis facing many European countries today. As Kingsley writes, he painstakingly analyzes foreign governments' public policies and procedures that are enforced--but sometimes fail--for refugees. The book moves quickly as Kingsley shares his and the migrants' perspectives through this arduous process, from boat traveling to human smuggling. Readers interested in global politics, migration and immigration studies, and current affairs will find this book to be deeply engaging, eye-opening, and insightful to the ongoing challenges that refugees face in navigating through these multilayered political and social systems. --Raymond Pun
Patrick Kingsley: THE NEW ODYSSEY
Kirkus Reviews. (Oct. 15, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
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Patrick Kingsley THE NEW ODYSSEY Liveright/Norton (Adult Nonfiction) 26.95 ISBN: 978-1631492556
Bravely following the refugee crisis from the Middle East to the European Union as it gains volume and urgency.The former Egypt correspondent for the Guardian and fortuitously named “the inaugural migration correspondent” at the paper just last year, Kingsley (How to be Danish: A Journey to the Cultural Heart of Denmark, 2014) takes both a personal and altruistic approach to the massive migration of peoples fleeing Syria and other global hot spots. In the past few years, there has been a huge spike in the numbers of civilians fleeing conflicts in the Middle East—indeed, an unprecedented number not equaled since the end of World War II. Since 2014, more than 1.4 million people crossed the Mediterranean Sea to reach ports in Turkey, Greece, or Italy, and from there to more benevolent havens in northern Europe such as Sweden and (now) Germany. Kingsley diligently pursues the fates of several specific refugees (though he prefers the more neutral word “migrant” over the politically heavy “refugee”). For example, Hashem, a Damascus civil servant with a wife and three sons, was rounded up in 2012 by the Syrian dictator’s police force, senselessly imprisoned and tortured, before the innocent man realized he and his family had to flee to survive. So he headed out on a long, expensive, and very dangerous journey, by boat, rail, and foot, from Egypt to Sweden, where he hoped to find permanent residence and eventually bring his family with him. Elsewhere, the author examines the life of the smuggler, who, in many cases, was once a migrant himself but is now taking advantage of the vulnerable refugees and getting rich; and people like Eric Kempson, a volunteer on the Turkish island of Lesvos, who actually helps the migrants with sorely needed food, water, and transportation when they literally wash ashore. The numbers will keep growing, notes the author, and denying the problem or closing the borders will only make it worse. A powerful firsthand account of a crisis that will continue to receive even more attention in the years to come.
The New Odyssey: The Story of the Twenty-First Century Refugee Crisis
Publishers Weekly. 263.38 (Sept. 19, 2016): p59.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
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The New Odyssey: The Story of the Twenty-First Century Refugee Crisis
Patrick Kingsley. Liveright, $26.85 (368p) ISBN 978-1-63149-255-6
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Guardian migration correspondent Kingsley (How to Be Danish) has written a moving and timely book that presents the crisis of the subtitle in both microcosm and macrocosm. He opens with an episode from Syrian refugee Hashem al-Souki's harrowing trek from his embattled home country in search of a safe haven for his family in Europe. Kingsley then pulls back to put al-Souki's situation in context, convincingly arguing that while there is a refugee crisis, "it's one caused largely by our response to the refugees, rather than by the refugees themselves." He points out that the number of refugees leaving Turkish shores in 2015 for the stability of Northern Europe represents just 0.2% of the E.U.'s total population, an influx that "the world's richest continent can feasibly absorb." Kingsley also notes that the failure to create an "organized system of mass resettlement" contributed to the situation. Alternating sections tracing al-Souki's odyssey help keep the reader grounded in the horrifying realities of the tragedy, while carefully chosen details, such as smugglers setting up Facebook pages to attract business, demonstrate how even responses to crisis can become prosaic. Illus. (Jan.)
Kingsley, Patrick: HOW TO BE DANISH
Kirkus Reviews. (Dec. 1, 2013):
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Kingsley, Patrick HOW TO BE DANISH Marble Arch/Simon & Schuster (Adult Nonfiction) $16.00 2, 4 ISBN: 978-1-4767-5548-9
A book so engagingly written and incisively reported that it will make readers who have never given a second thought to Denmark give at least passing thought to moving there. It would be a mistake to think that there's nothing rotten in Denmark, but this interconnected series of cultural essays by Guardian Egypt correspondent Kingsley makes a convincing case for how much the country has going for it as well as an indication of the challenges that lie ahead. The author examines the international success of The Killing, a TV series which "wasn't so much a cult hit as a state religion" in its homeland and subsequently became the rage of the author's native England (and didn't fare as well but earned a cult following in its American adaptation). He extends his appreciation through the country's "extraordinary culinary revival"--Noma is widely considered the world's finest restaurant--and social services that encompass "childcare, healthcare and education," including "university education and most of its living costs." "Students aren't seen as a burden on the state, but as people whose skills will one day support it," writes the author. "They're future participants in Danish life, and they're treated as such." Demographic challenges include the increase in retirees who benefit from that welfare state and the difficulties faced by anyone who doesn't fit the Danish norm--not only immigrants, but also Muslims and others who were born there. Kingsley makes a strong case that Muslim protest over the cartoons of Muhammad, cast as a free speech issue throughout most of the democratic West, was a response to caricature "intended to provoke and humiliate an already marginalized section of society." Though the scope of the book is small and the style conversational, Kingsley renders the quality and complexity of life in Denmark with an outsider's fresh perspective and a journalist's sharp instincts.
How to Be Danish: A Journey to the Cultural Heart of Denmark
Publishers Weekly. 260.44 (Nov. 4, 2013): p57.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 PWxyz, LLC
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How to Be Danish: A Journey to the Cultural Heart of Denmark
Patrick Kingsley. Atria/Marble Arch, $16 (208p) ISBN 978-1-4767-5548-9
Through a set of meandering and passionless notes that is part reportage and part travelogue, British journalist Kingsley inexplicably explores various aspects of Danish culture, hoping to reveal the "wider context to the bits of Denmark that over the past few years have intrigued us in Britain." With the wide-eyed wonder of a stranger in a remotely familiar land, Kingsley roams listlessly through topics ranging from politics and economics to food, film noir, Legos, and architecture. For example, Kingsley describes Copenhagen's small size as the secret to its creativity: it's "where the world's foodies currently go to eat"; its television studios are the home of Danish noir, and it heats and cools its homes from a central hub, a plan that has reduced carbon emissions 70%. The Danish capital is such a bicycle-friendly city that "Copenhageners cycle to live, but they don't live to cycle." Using the Danish architect Arne Jacobsen's design of the Egg chair as a starting point, Kingsley discusses the impact of Danish Modernist furniture designs on the world while revealing that most Danish Modernists simply "wanted their furniture to change the way people lived at home... and were concerned about the context in which it was placed and the problems it could help solve. "In the end, Kingsley's digressive and unmoored ramblings offer a too-personal reflection on why Denmark interests the British. (Feb.)
'The New Odyssey' follows the men, women, children streaming to Europe
James Norton
The Christian Science Monitor. (Jan. 10, 2017): Arts and Entertainment:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Christian Science Publishing Society
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Byline: James Norton
In the world of modern politics, there may be no issue more successfully weaponized than the challenge of refugees and immigration. It played a major role in America's presidential upset. It has cracked and may yet break the European Union. And it has become one of the defining issues in the greater Mediterranean region, with tendrils reaching deeply into the Middle East and both West and East Africa.
For all its power, the question of refugees and economic migrants is rarely discussed with much nuance. As framed by nativist politicians, the refugee crisis is a tide of undesirables aided by nefarious smugglers, hoping to emigrate to richer countries to take advantage of robust safety nets without assimilating into the local culture. And as framed by their leftist opponents, it's hardworking, victimized people who deserve protection and compassion as they resettle in the industrialized West.
But as richly researched and told by Patrick Kingsley's book The New Odyssey the refugee crisis is more complicated and also starker than either vision - it's a mass movement of people who, in many if not most cases, would literally rather be dead than remain where they are.
Kingsley, the inaugural migration correspondent for the Guardian, digs deep with his research. He takes the reader to the front lines of people smuggling (and people trafficking).
He follows the movement of literally countless men, women, and children streaming toward Europe - they come in un-ventilated tanker trucks moving through the Sahara and in inflatable Zodiac boats down to their last intact inflatable chamber trying to make it over the treacherous Mediterranean. And they wait in squalid, overcrowded holding pens to make their first, or fourth, or 30th attempt to cross over to Italy, or Greece, or another such (relatively) hospitable shore.
Over the course of the book, Kingsley deploys first-hand observations, probing interviews, and copious testimony to paint a vivid picture of the human suffering that migrants face during their journey. His writing is clean and crisp, clearly honed by newspaper deadlines and wordcounts - he paints full pictures, but doesn't overload his paragraphs or his pages, making "The New Odyssey" a rapid but rich read.
Throughout the book, he closely follows one particular refugee, Hashem al-Souki of Syria, as he struggles to reach Italy from Egypt. Here's Hashem traveling by sea:
Within an hour, Hashem's wondering if it was all worth it. He's already been soaked, tossed between several boats, and caked in vomit. By the time he reaches the third boat, the one that's supposed to take him to Italy, the night seems as if it will never end. The boat is swaying, and his world is spinning. Hundreds of people are being loaded, tossed really, onto the ship. It takes hours - long, cold hours. Everyone is nauseous. Everyone is shivering. In front of him, children are turning blue.
Kingsley also examines the bigger patterns that define the migrant problem and explain why it's so difficult to resolve. From the economic malaise of West Africa to the political tyranny of Eritrea to the civil war in Syria, the sources of waves of grimly determined migrants are both diverse and powerful. The human tide, he suggests, will not stop until the root problems are tamed. And on the enforcement end of things, the author reveals a host of problems: European countries not willing or able to work as a unit to stem the human cost of the refugee crisis, smugglers who briefly rent fishing boats and essentially work part-time (making their activities extremely hard to track and restrict), and fierce infighting about the two (often falsely represented as opposing) goals of saving human lives and restricting the illegal movement of people.
Anyone who thinks that the refugee crisis is a straightforward problem - to be solved with iron fences or with welcoming committees - will benefit from "The New Odyssey." Kingsley marshals facts and numbers effectively, but the crowning virtue of his book is its clear-eyed and sober sense of compassion. He is moved by the human lives being threatened (and often extinguished) by the terrible journeys that he documents. And he is determined to disentangle the knot of problems that stand between the current situation and a new, humane order in the Mediterranean and beyond. By looking at warm-hearted rescuers as well as cold-blooded smugglers, and possible solutions as well as grave problems, Kingsley finds the good - and the hope - in a truly massive challenge to our collective humanity.
Refugee crisis won't disappear soon, 'New Odyssey' author says
By Lauren LeBlanc Special to the Post-Dispatch Jan 7, 2017 (0)
'The New Odyssey
“The New Odyssey: The Story of the Twenty-First-Century Refugee Crisis”
By Patrick Kingsley
Published by Liveright, 351 pages, $26.95
On sale Tuesday
Writing contemporary history is a harrowing proposition. The enormity of today’s refugee crisis is both unbearable and impossible to fully comprehend. The situation draws from a wide array of political and humanitarian catastrophes — civil wars in Syria, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq, ISIS and sustained political unrest in Eritrea and Libya, among others — making it a tangled subject at best.
Fortunately, Patrick Kingsley has written a lucid and unflinching book that captures the ripples of the largest wave of mass migration since World War II. “The New Odyssey” delicately grapples with the task of encapsulating the crisis without diminishing its sprawling horror.
As the Guardian newspaper’s first migration reporter, Kingsley’s beat sharply focuses on the ways families find themselves uprooted by global conflict. His empathetic lens allows him to take the time to distinguish between fact and fiction. Walking through the motivations of refugees, he dismisses the charges that millions of people have abandoned their homelands, depleted their life savings while risking their lives in order to live off the handouts of Western Europe and North America. After reading this wrenching account of the refugee plight, you will not question their motivations.
“At a time when travel is for many easy and anodyne, their voyages through the Sahara, the Balkans or across the Mediterranean — on foot, in the holds of wooden fishing boats and on the backs of land cruisers — are almost as epic as that of classical heroes such as Aeneas and Odysseus. ... Three millennia after their classical forebears created the founding myths of the European continent, today’s voyagers are writing a new narrative that will influence Europe, for better or worse, for years to come.”
Maintaining objectivity, Kingsley interviews both smugglers and refugees, exploring all angles of movement. While the refugees use social media to find smugglers, who widely advertise on Facebook, they also use it to find their own way. Carefully written instructions that paint verbal maps have helped refugees move from Italy, through the Balkans and onward into Western Europe. Their resiliency and faith will humble you.
Kingsley’s steady reporting underlines his critical humanitarian message. While war and repression spurred this current migration, he predicts the situation will not abate. As nationalism rises in the United States and Europe, Kingsley observes that “desperation will ultimately prove stronger than our isolationism, particularly if climate change begins to force more and more people north, as some commentators have argued.”
As Europe fails to contain the migration, Kingsley points a finger at politicians’ inability to accept that this is by no means a temporary situation. Should an immigration policy emerge that is capable of processing migrants legally, much of the crisis could be managed with less risk, strife and intolerance. As it stands, the United Nations procedures for applying for refugee status leave too many people without time or means to take advantage of the few bureaucratic options available.
Since 2014, more than 1.4 million people sailed across the Mediterranean under terrifying circumstances to seek new lives. The lives they left behind no longer exist. These numbers grow daily. “The New Odyssey” is a story that you cannot avoid.
Lauren LeBlanc is a freelance book editor and writer, as well as a nonfiction editor at Guernica magazine. A native New Orleanian, she lives in Brooklyn.
The New Odyssey: The Story of the Twenty-First Century Refugee Crisis
Image of The New Odyssey: The Story of the Twenty-First Century Refugee Crisis
Author(s):
Patrick Kingsley
Release Date:
January 9, 2017
Publisher/Imprint:
Liveright
Pages:
368
Buy on Amazon
Reviewed by:
Elayne Clift
If every journalist wrote like Patrick Kingsley, more people would likely be reading the critical nonfiction books of our time. Kingsley writes with clarity and compassion as he puts a human face on the largest mass migration the world has experienced since World War II. He also does an excellent job of deconstructing all that is wrong with the world’s approach to the refugee crisis and offers constructive ideas to remedy the situation within a realistic framework.
The journeys taking place by individuals and families from Syria, Africa, and other places of destruction and hopelessness documented in this important book are heartbreaking. Kingsley has done a great service by painting a portrait of what is happening as desperate people continue to risk death to escape tyranny while the world responds in a totally inadequate way.
The stories of suffering and heroic attempts to end that suffering that Kingsley tells are classically archetypal. There are heroes, villains, mentors, nurturing mothers and more character types. Catalytic events motivate risk-taking, dangerous quests for a better life. Myriad obstacles must be overcome. Bodies of water need to be crossed. There is darkness, both literal and symbolic, to be endured. Success means rebirth. Defeat often means death.
Kingsley traveled to 17 countries across three continents with people whose stories he tells. Most compelling among them is Hashem al-Souki, a Syrian who tried three times to reach Sweden while his family waited nervously for news from him. In alternate chapters, we walk with him, travel by boat and train with him, suffer sleepless nights in chilling weather, worry about his family, wonder what the outcome will be. We share his fear and despair. We hold our breath with him as border guards approach. We want to offer him solace. And he is just one of the people we are introduced to whose suffering is nothing short of biblical.
Statistics reveal a growing crisis. For example, from 2014 to 2016 nearly 1.5 million people crossed the Mediterranean in leaky boats. In 2015 more than 850,000 refugees left Turkey alone, most of them marching northward through the Balkans. That year the refugee crisis came to a head. Nearly 4,000 people drowned while crossing the Aegean. Countries like Greece, Italy, and Hungary found themselves unable to cope while many countries ignored the problem, pretended it wasn’t happening, or sought ways to ensure they weren’t overly affected by the “huddled masses yearning to be free.” The U.S., which had taken hundreds of thousands of refugees after Vietnam, now promised to take a mere 10,000 Syrian refugees.
It’s hard for anyone to wrap their heads around the staggering numbers of people who keep trying to make it, often multiple times, given the reality of what they face. Here is one scene of a rescue at sea. “One by one, they totter uncertainly up a ladder and onto the deck of the [ship]. Some can barely walk, their legs cramped and numb from hours of sitting in the same position, trapped between their neighbors. Some are covered in vomit, after choking on the fumes in the hold. As they step onto the deck and a man extends a hand and a hello, relief blooms across their faces. ‘I must thank you,’ says a thirty-five year old Eritrean schoolteacher. ‘When we saw you we automatically changed from animals into humans.’”
Every person Kingsley meets has suffered an unimaginable and deeply traumatic ordeal, ranging from trekking across a desert with insufficient food or water, being tortured, abused, and humiliated by various authorities, getting ripped off by smugglers and surviving, often barely, days at sea in overcrowded, unsafe boats. So why do they still come? “There we know we will die. If we make it, there is at least hope,” the refugees say.
Kingsley’s final chapter before revealing the end of Hashem’s story, “A Gate Clangs Shut,” should be required reading for heads of state who continue to try averting their gaze from the human tragedy taking place. They “need to wake from their fantasies,” he admonishes,” pointing out that “it is impossible to completely seal Europe’s borders. People will keep coming,” and “Europe’s current approach to migration benefits no one. Not the refugees who will keep on drowning at sea and suffocating in the back of smugglers’ vans. And not the Europeans, who in their refusal to admit the inevitability of the situation are making things far more chaotic than they need to be.”
Kingsley is not an idealist. He knows that there isn’t an easy solution. The crisis cannot be avoided, but it can be mitigated, he says. “Accepting this reality is the key to managing it.”
The book concludes with a message from Hashem Al-Souki who says he made the correct decision to “save ourselves and our children by leaving the country. . . . Had we stayed, they would have been by default raised on weapons and war. The only option was to leave.” In the grueling, punishing process of trying to find a better life, he says he learned many things, chief among them that “there are many people who will give you hope.” One can only wish that some of them are political leaders who understand what Hashem calls the “determination to plough on through the darkness.”
Elayne Clift, a writer, journalist, and adjunct professor, is Sr. Correspondent for the India-based syndicate Women’s Feature Service and a regular columnist for the Keene (NH) Sentinel and the Brattleboro (VT) Commons. Her latest book is ACHAN: A Year of Teaching in Thailand (Bangkok Books, 2007). She is currently at work on a book about doula-supported birth in the US.
How to be Danish
November 14, 2013
How to be Danish.jpg
Patrick Kingsley is a foreign correspondent working for the Guardian. He wrote How to be Danish after a stay in Copenhagen in the Spring in 2012 and it was published in paperback in 2013 by Short Books with line-work illustrations by Karoline Kirchhübel.
I suppose it is slightly odd, or at least at one remove, for me, who is English, to review what another Englishman has to say about the Danes, and possibly even odder that the book was recommended to me by a Brazilian friend, but I found his comments and observations not only wide ranging and perceptive but generally very appreciative or even affectionate.
The book is divided into eight main chapters covering education, in its broadest sense, the food revolution in Copenhagen, Danish design, the welfare state, Denmark and the approach to immigration, Copenhagen planning and architecture generally (seen primarily through the number of cyclists in the City), the significance of the success of Danish TV, through the massive popularity abroad of series like The Killing and Borgen, and a brief look at a couple of settlements away from Copenhagen to try and see why, in recent global surveys, Copenhagen in particular and Denmark in general, is seen as a place where people are content and even happy. That last chapter looks at the island of Somsø and discusses wind farms there and the laudable Danish approach to sustainable energy.
In August Copenhagen came first, for a second time in seven years, in the annual survey by Monocle magazine to find the top 25 cities in the World recognised for their quality of life. Maybe it is important to emphasise here that neither Patrick Kingsley nor Monocle imply that this is something that has just happened without effort or is something that Danes are complacent or smug about: the Monocle reporters, in an opening paragraph, talk about Copenhagen’s “ability to see itself as a global city” whose “wonderful reinvention continues to impress” and in this book Kingsley looks at a well-established history of alliance politics (there has not been a single-party majority in Denmark since 1901) as something positive and he assesses influences like the importance of co-operation in communities as a well-established concept and the Co-op specifically as an important commercial movement in what was, apart from Copenhagen, a largely agrarian population.
Many of the chapters come around to discussing some aspect of design - perhaps not surprising given that the full title of the Book is How to be Danish - A journey to the cultural heart of Denmark - so, for instance, an assessment of the renaissance of Danish TV, starting with The Killing, ends with a fascinating (and that is not sarcasm) account of Susan Johansen knitting the jumpers worn by Sofie Gråbøl and the ongoing fashion success of Gudrun and Gudrun and the knitters from the Faroe Islands. Kingsley even finds a knitting circle where elderly women in a day centre find their skills and work now appreciated by young fashion-conscious Danes.
There is an interesting account of a visit to the Fritz Hansen furniture workshops where he observes the pride with which the work is completed by hand - there are 1200 stitches for the cover of the famous egg chair - and he interviews the director of the Danish Design Centre where they discuss the apparent fixation of Danish designers of the 20th century with the form of the chair.
Kingsley makes interesting observations about Danish architecture and the relatively new emergence of concept rather than context in design. Context, to over simplify, is a careful focus on conservation and human scale that, essentially, created the walking street in Copenhagen, still the longest pedestrian area in the World, and concept is where the innovation and style of the individual building is more important than its setting. In Copenhagen the new development to the south of the old city, towards the airport, has very large, striking and novel apartment buildings that have received international recognition for their design individually but these buildings are less recognisably Danish.
The book also illuminates one key point about design in Denmark that I had been aware of in a vague way but had never been able to put my finger on or articulate as an approach to design as such. Arne Jacobsen was probably the most important Danish architect of the 20th century but is often described as a furniture designer because of his work on the interiors of the buildings that he designed such as the SAS Hotel in Copenhagen. He designed not only chairs but door handles, cutlery and textiles for the hotel. This is in part explained by one statement in the book about Danes being “nuts about detailing” but that aim, to create a complete building and interior, is far from a bad thing particularly when you look at new buildings in Denmark like the National Library in Copenhagen (known as the Black Diamond) where stair handrails, flooring and even the moving staircase are seen as worthy of equal care and attention when it comes to their design.
Kingsley interviewed Kristian Bytge who runs Muuto, one of the newest furniture companies and one that promotes young designers but he pointed out that “a very high percentage of Danes know about Arne Jacobsen … we are proud of our design heritage … design is in our cultural DNA.”
The book ends with some simple statistics without comments but here you begin to understand why Danes, some of the most highly taxed people in the World, can never-the-less be seen as some of the happiest. The minimum wage is £11.40 an hour, 96% of children aged 3-5 are in state-subsidised daycare and university education is free, 74% of Danish mothers work, 36% of Copenhagers commute to work by bike, 20% of electricity is powered by wind and 98% of Copenhagen homes are connected to district heaters.
Good design is about so much more than aesthetics.
How To Be Danish: From Lego to Lund. A Short Introduction to the State of Denmark by Patrick Kingsley
How To Be Danish: From Lego to Lund. A Short Introduction to the State of Denmark by Patrick Kingsley
Category: Travel
Rating: 4.5/5
Reviewer: Robert James
Reviewed by Robert James
Summary: This insightful guide into the happiest country in the world is a perfect stocking-filler for anyone with an interest in foreign cultures. Patrick Kingsley popped into Bookbag Towers to chat to us.
Buy? Yes Borrow? Yes
Pages: 192 Date: November 2012
Publisher: Short Books
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 978-1780721330
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First, the bad news. This slim volume won't actually tell you how to become a Danish person, despite the title. What it will do, though, is give you a new appreciation for the people of Denmark, and quite possibly make you want to jump on the first plane to Copenhagen to savour what is, according to the United Nations, the happiest country in the world.
It's a credit to the author Patrick Kingsley that in a slim, small book, the perfect size to fit into a Christmas stocking, say, he's covered such a wealth of topics. The subtitle talks of Lego and Lund (as in the detective Sarah Lund, lead character of The Killing), but the book also takes in famous restaurant Noma, Danish furniture manufacturers, and the issues with the Danish language, amongst a host of other subjects. I think my personal favourite has to be the chapter on the role of immigrants in Danish society, which is fascinating, particularly considering the furore a few years ago over the cartoons of Muhammed in the country's press.
Kingsley has an engaging, rambling style. The chapter on Danish design starts off talking about furniture and quickly focuses on a company sticking posters saying 'only for surgical staff' or 'only for medical staff' on everything they can find in a hospital. (If it sounds confusing, it's very well-explained, and definitely worth reading why they did it!) Other chapters take similar detours, including one to the Faroe Islands, to meet the woman who makes Sarah Lund's famous jumpers. The chapters ae relatively short, most running about twenty pages, and can be read in any order so it's a fun book to just dip into - but so interesting that you're likely to want to run through it in one go.
Highly recommended to anyone looking to gain an insight into a wonderful country.
As soon as I hear the word Denmark I think of Carsten Jensen's epic We, the Drowned, one of the finest works of the literature of the past decade, for my money. If you'd rather stick with non-fiction and want to look at another fascinating country, I can also highly recommend Bangkok Days by Lawrence Osborne.