Patrick Kingsley: Reporting the Refugee Crisis

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Patrick Kingsley is one of the most dazzling young journalists out there. At the age of 26 he is The Guardian’s sole migration correspondent, a two-time author, his most recent book “The New Odyssey” being a perceptive and touching account of the refugee crisis. I talked to Patrick about his book, his role, and his experiences as a reporter in the midst of one of the biggest humanitarian crises of the decade. Patrick, let us start with Hashem al-Souki, the main protagonist of your book “The New Odyssey”. How did you get to know him in the first place? And why did you decide to follow his particular fate? In September 2014 a boat went down off the coast of Egypt with about 500 people on board. In the course of researching how this happened I …show more content…

What made you opt for this title? I was trying to remind the reader that these great journeys are not just something from our age but also from centuries and millennia past. And one way of reminding people of that is to evoke the title of a famous migration like the Odyssey. However, if it had been better known I might have called it “The New …show more content…

© Guardian Faber I was going to ask you about that… Well, I am sorry to preempt your question, but yes, the Odyssey is of course about a very difficult journey but it is not necessarily about a refugee. Odysseus is someone who tries to get home from a war, whereas the Aeneid is about someone who is fleeing a war. Ironically, Aeneas is fleeing from the same war as Odysseus was leaving from, but he is actually trying to find a new home, rather than going back to his old one. So for me the Aeneid was a slightly better template because Aeneas is in essence a refugee. However, in Britain at least, the Odyssey is much better known . That is why I called it “The New Odyssey” because I thought it would have more recognition among potential readers. It’s basically the same situation in Germany. Everyone knows the Odyssey but very few people have heard of the Aeneid. Except for Latin teachers, perhaps. I studied both at school, so I know and love them both, but the Aeneid is my favourite because there is something a little bit more urgent about it. This guy and his family have to get out of Troy, as it’s burning. Whereas Odysseus, he is sort of meandering around half the time and having a bit of fun. It does not feel like it has the same

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