This element of the struggle for survival takes us back to Omar’s past work, American War, published in 2017, which grapples with the uncertainty that comes with conflict and contestation over resources amid the challenges of climate change and epidemics. Omar captures the predicament of the displaced and stateless subject and the uncertainty that is woven into the person’s very existence. Amir’s arrival is the fulcrum of the two narratives that appear alternatively throughout the novel-one part on the Calypso, the small fishing boat overloaded with passengers and the other spent with the kindly Vänna.Ī defense of immigration in literary form, the book attempts to humanize the refugee ‘other’ as it presents the precarious life of being a migrant in turbulent waters and beyond. The chapters in the book are structured in two time frames-“Before” and “After”-the former covering the sequence of events that led Amir to the island and the latter relating his journey upon washing ashore. Scared and alone, he gets up and runs from the uniformed men who sprint after him, toward some sheltering trees, only to emerge later “haggard and panting” in front of Vänna, who instantly feels that the boy is in danger and takes him in. The story begins with Amir waking up on the beach littered with wreckage of the boat and drowned passengers, his face caked with sand. Straddling the two extremities of hostility and compassion is the story of a relationship between Amir, a 9-year-old Syrian boy, the sole survivor of a migrant shipwreck, and Vänna Hermes, a 15-year-old resident of an unnamed Mediterranean island, where Amir has washed up on the shore.
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