Saturday Breakfast Book Club: "What Strange Paradise" (In-Person Session)

Join us for our Saturday Breakfast Book Club! Each month, we'll read one of the novels & memoirs the New York Times designates as its "Most Notable Books" from the preceding year while enjoying coffee and baked goods. We will meet at 10 am every fourth Saturday to discuss the book; patrons have the option of attending virtually or in person. Our April selection will be the acclaimed 2021 novel What Strange Paradise by bestselling author Omar El Akkad.

More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another overfilled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives back in their homelands. But miraculously, someone has survived the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who is soon rescued by Vanna. Vanna is a teenage girl, who, despite being native to the island, experiences her own sense of homelessness in a place and among people she has come to disdain. And though Vanna and Amir are complete strangers, though they don't speak a common language, Vanna is determined to do whatever it takes to save the boy.

In alternating chapters, we learn about Amir's life and how he came to be on the boat, and we follow him and the girl as they make their way toward safety. What Strange Paradise is the story of two children finding their way through a hostile world. But it is also a story of empathy and indifference, of hope and despair--and about the way each of those things can blind us to reality.

Copies of the novel will be made available at the library's Circulation Desk. Please sign up below to participate in this month's discussion!