The Losses That Create Us with Omar El Akkad

The scene is familiar. A small child lies on a beach with his head towards the ocean and feet on dry sand. The image of Alan Kurdi, a three year old Kurdish Syrian boy has become part of the global psyche and in his book, What Strange Paradise, Omar El Akkad begins with the same image. But in this version Amir is a few years older. And he gets up.

Omar El Akkad is the author of American War which looked at the possible outcome of another civil war in the not too distant American future. This new book, What Strange Paradise, looks at the migrant crisis, and by crisis I mean migrants in a crisis that the west has created. Join us for a difficult, and spoiler-free, conversation about being unmoored and displaced, the losses that create us.

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