100 Books Like The New Odyssey

Making Refuge focuses on Somali Bantu refugees who were resettled in the town of Lewiston, Maine in the early 2000s. These refugees had been the focus of Besteman’s earlier research in Somalia in the 1980s. About a decade after Somalia plunged into civil war, Somali Bantus were being resettled in the United States, enabling Besteman to physically reconnect with them. One of the strengths of this book is that it provides rich historical context, giving the reader an overview of the different stages of the refugee experience: the events leading to war and displacement, life in refugee camps in Kenya, and resettlement in the United States.

Making Refuge is also one of the few books that gives ethnographic insight into the refugee resettlement process in the United States. Through its focus on the challenges faced by resettled Somali Bantus, who are Black and Muslim, it questions the assumptions underlying the… show more.

This is another book that addresses Europe’s 2015-2016 “refugee crisis.” While Miliband also offers some insights into the experience of refugees seeking asylum in Europe, the focus of his book is on how current European policy betrays the values at the core of Europe’s recent history and self-understanding. Miliband weaves analysis of the predicament of mostly Middle Eastern and African refugees attempting to reach Europe through irregular Mediterranean routes with reflection on his parents’ experience as Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany and seeking protection in England in the 1940s. The strength of Rescue is that it provides the reader with multiple frames of reference for thinking about what ought to be Europe’s response toward contemporary refugees, a significant number of whom are Muslims from the Middle East. 

Reluctant Reception is a worthwhile read in that it addresses refugee policy from the perspective of Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey, three states located in the Middle East and North Africa. Norman argues that, like other states in the Global South, these states are often perceived as transit countries for migrants and refugees, who ultimately want to reach Europe. Norman shows, however, that these states’ lack of a strong formalized refugee policy hides the fact that political and economic interests play a major role in informing their response to migrants and refugees.

Norman also shows that apparent disinterest in migration is part of a deliberate strategy that countries in the Global South use in order to have international organizations, as well as Western governments (the latter being keen on limiting migration from the Global South), provide for the basic costs of hosting migrants and refugees. Reluctant Reception not only provides compelling… show more.

Syrian Women Refugees is a good complement to the other books on this list because the stories that make up the book move beyond the violence, trauma, and suffering that the reader might expect from a book on refugees displaced by war. The book reads more like a story of nine Syrian women, who also happen to have been displaced by the Syrian war and to have become refugees. The women’s narratives take us into their childhood, their everyday life in pre-war Syria, and their experiences adapting to their new host countries. Through these women’s stories, which focus on topics like religion, family life, and gender dynamics, the reader gets rich cultural insight into life in Syria as well as in the host country. The reader also gets insight into the women’s own self-understanding and the extent to which war and forced displacement have impacted this understanding.

Because the broader… show more.

This quiet, unsettling book was written over a decade ago but still feels so topical and urgent that it might have been published today. In a German city, dozens of African migrants living on the street stage a hunger strike for the right to work. Richard, a widowed academic in bored retirement goes to meet them, and gets involved.

I recalled my own impulses to activism and charity as a kid and now— my curiosity to understand other people's plight, compulsion to help, and perhaps guilt that, in comparison, my own problems are negligible.

Richard is motivated by morality, a search for meaning, and a desire for connection and shared action. I've been there, too, and like him, I've learned that friendships can sour and good intentions go wrong.

In Calais, France, on Europe’s northern edge, migrants from across the Middle East and Africa settled, hopeful that they would eventually make it across the English Channel.

While they waited, they built lives, relationships, and the ramshackle edifices that poverty permits—the ingredients of communities. Only to be attacked, sometimes by neighbors, other times by police. In this graphic novel, Evans brings Europe’s refugees to life in their humor, hope, and despair.

This moving narrative describes the life of a doctor working on the Italian island of Lampedusa, who learns firsthand about hundreds of thousands of African and Middle Eastern refugees fleeing civil war and terrorism and hoping to make a new life in Europe. Dr. Pietro Bartolo, who runs the lone medical clinic on the island, took care of these refugees for more than 25 years, before being the subject of a remarkable film, which is both fictional and real, called Fire At Sea. That film, and this book, shed light on the remarkable life and work of Dr. Bartolo and, moreover, tells the stories of refugees, alive and dead, whose worlds collided with a complex geopolitical system that creates hardship, and then seeks ways of helping those affected.

Based on a true story, this is an important, thought-provoking book in these times of mass migrations around the globe. The story follows the thirteen-year-old boy Otto Ullman’s journey from Vienna to Trelleborg in southern Sweden. He is sent by his adoring Jewish parents as the persecution of Jews escalates in Austria during the lead-up to the second world war. The letters between Otto and his family, other relatives, and friends left behind are difficult to read. The efforts they all make to keep a brave face in spite of intolerable circumstances are utterly moving. Amongst the letters are official Swedish documents revealing the extent of racism and prejudice in Sweden. There are many similar stories. But I find this one particularly heartbreaking. 

This stunning, superlative novel soars in its lyricism. In just 194 pages, we get a lifetime. Yohan leaves the Korean peninsula after the war and becomes an apprentice to a Japanese tailor in Brazil. This story is quiet, without a lot of fireworks, but it’s nonetheless haunting and just gorgeous. 

Wildman’s obsession made me keep turning the pages long past when I should have been sleeping. She is a journalist, so when she discovers the mystery of a secret folder of letters from her grandfather’s old girlfriend, she sets out to discover why they were separated and what happened to his first love.