Omar El Akkad won the National Book Award in 2025 for One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. In April, the Iron Book Discussion Group will read and discuss his 2021 novel, What Strange Paradise.
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BOOK DESCRIPTION
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 Vänna. Vänna 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 Vänna and Amir are complete strangers, though they don’t speak a common language, Vänna 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.
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Copies of What Strange Paradise can be picked up from the Book Discussion Shelf on our first floor, and it’s also available to download through Overdrive/Libby as an audiobook.
An in-person discussion of What Strange Paradise will be held at the library on Tuesday, April 14, at 6:00 PM. No registration is required, so please join us if you’d like to be part of the discussion.
Published on March 19, 2026.
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