Politics & Prose at Busboys and Poets 14th & V welcomes Patrick Kingsley to the Langston Room to present his new book "The New Odyssey: The Story of the Twenty-First Century Refugee Crisis."
Kingsley, former Egypt correspondent for The Guardian and now the paper’s inaugural migration correspondent, draws on his work in seventeen countries for a profile of some of the world’s most desperate people. Since 2014 more than 1.4 million migrants have fled the Middle East for Europe. Cutting through the overwhelming statistics, Kingsley humanizes the crisis with vivid first-hand accounts of several individuals. He follows Hashem al-Soukias, who fled Damascus with his family, found temporary refuge in Egypt three years later, then crossed the Mediterranean in an overcrowded dinghy, hoping to settle in Sweden. Other migrants report starvation, sandstorms, exploitative smugglers, corrupt officials—but also generous locals and compassionate volunteers. Kingsley, named foreign affairs journalist of the year in 2015 for the reporting that led to this book, issues an urgent call to action to stop this global crisis.
Kingsley will be in conversation with Amanda Taub, columnist for The New York Times.
