Cast Away: True Stories of Survival from Europe¿s Refugee Crisis

by Charlotte McDonald-Gibson

Overview

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence 2017

“Galvanizing and deeply compassionate.”
—O Magazine

From Time magazine's European Union correspondent, a powerful exploration of the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean, told through the stories of migrants who have made the perilous journey into Europe

In 2015, more than one million migrants and refugees, most fleeing war-torn countries in Africa and the Middle East, attempted to make the perilous journey into Europe. Around three thousand lost their lives as they crossed the Mediterranean and Aegean in rickety boats provided by unscrupulous traffickers, including over seven hundred men, women, and children in a single day in April 2015.

In one of the first works of narrative nonfiction on the ongoing refugee crisis and the civil war in Syria, Cast Away describes the agonizing stories and the impossible decisions that migrants have to make as they head toward what they believe is a better life: a pregnant Eritrean woman, four days overdue, chooses to board an obviously unsafe smuggler's ship to Greece; a father, swimming from a sinking ship, has to decide whether to hold on to one child or let him go to save another.

Veteran journalist Charlotte McDonald-Gibson offers a vivid, on-the-ground glimpse of the pressures and hopes that drive individuals to risk their lives. Recalling the work of Katherine Boo and Caroline Moorehead, Cast Away brings to life the human consequences of one of the most urgent humanitarian issues of our time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620972632
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	09/06/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d)

Table of Contents

List of country codes ix

Map x

List of people xiii

Introduction 1

2011

1 A Dictator's Revenge 9

2 Into the Storm 25

3 Welcome to Europe 37

2012

4 Married to the Military 51

5 Sleeping on the Roofs of Police Stations 63

6 Three Friends 78

2013

7 A Family Betrayal 91

8 An Indefinable Suffering 104

9 Never Again 116

10 Fortress Europe 132

11 Our Sea 144

12 Europe Turns Ugly 154

13 Escaping 13V105 167

2014

14 Hunted 179

15 All Alone 188

16 A Very Long Transit 199

17 A Lifeline Cut Off 215

2015

18 Ghosts on the Horizon 229

19 At the Crossroads of Europe 247

20 Dark Thoughts 261

21 A Moral Emergency 268

22 Lockdown 280

Epilogue: No Direction Home 295

Author's Note on the Text 307

Glossary 309

Sources 312

Acknowledgements 334

Editorial Reviews

07/25/2016
In her first book, McDonald-Gibson, a journalist experienced in covering the European Union, examines the last five years of the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean. Her account is told, in large part, through the voices of refugees such as Majid, a young Nigerian forced to flee two different homes, and Sina, an Eritrean woman who, with her husband, did not think of leaving her home until staying became impossible. The author’s note at the end of the book clarifies some of her choices—including the use of pseudonyms when requested—but might have been better placed at the beginning. McDonald-Gibson is shrewd in her presentation of the EU’s failures, though she’s often less pointed when discussing northern European countries. The book shines as a portrait of the hopes and frustrations of the families and individuals who risk so much for safer lives and the generosities and cruelties, both passive and active, that they encounter in their travels. This book will be illuminating for every reader who wants to better understand the human side of a complex, wrenching issue. Agent: Charlie Viney, Viney Agency (U.K.). (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Cast Away:
"Charlotte McDonald-Gibson makes clear just how long the obstacle course is and how high the hurdles loom."
—The New York Review of Books

"[T]his stirring contemporary account roots the mythic perilous journey in the heartbreak of personal stories."
—Booklist

"Skillfully weaving together the tragic stories of her subjects, McDonald-Gibson successfully humanizes them and provides readers a much-needed inside look at a significant problem. A powerfully written, well-documented account of a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"Well-composed and well-researched, with the satisfaction of human interest stories, this title belongs in all collections for its timeliness and historical and political significance."
—Library Journal

"A closely reported, passionately argued, often deeply moving account of five refugees' journeys to Europe. . . . It yanks away the anonymous screen of numbers and brings you face to face with real people—people you can recognise, in situations you can't."
—The Guardian

"McDonald-Gibson's gripping storytelling has a cinematic quality as she inhabits the minds of these individuals. At times it's easy to forget that these are the experiences of real people, not fictional characters, as the reader becomes immersed in harrowing stories of danger, deception and disillusionment."
—The Irish Times

"A series of portraits which re-humanise individuals who are routinely treated as statistics when they are not demonised outright. . . . An invaluable reminder that most migrants are people who are really not so very different from us."
—International Business Times

"McDonald-Gibson keenly evokes the hell of [these] voyages: water lapping over the sides of the boats, nothing to eat or drink, failing engines, bodies thrown overboard. To read these vivid stories is to understand not just the enormity of what is taking place, but the courage and desperation of those who embark on them."
—Caroline Moorehead, New Statesman

"We have digested the refugee crisis in its scary statistics, its shocking images, and in the xenophobic reactions it has provoked inside Europe. But in Cast Away we discover the human reality of the biggest crisis of our times as it is experienced by the individuals concerned, in all the painful particularity of their individual lives, reported and narrated with vigor and compassion."
—Peter Popham, author of The Lady and the Peacock

"This is a book that needed to be written and stories which needed to be told."
—Alex Crawford, author of Colonel Gaddafi's Hat

"This is a fascinating and necessary book about one of the great tragedies of our age as people flee failed and failing states in pursuit of a safe and normal life. It is essential reading for anybody interested in the individuals taking part in this mass flight and why they feel they have no choice but to escape."
—Patrick Cockburn

"A remarkably well documented and vivid account of why and how people are on the move towards Europe, an indictment of the European Union and its member states, and a call for moral clarity and political leadership."
—François Crépeau, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants

"Searing tales of courage, hardship and survival that reveal the terrible human cost of Europe's dystopian borders. A tour-de-force of committed investigative reporting."
—Matthew Carr, author of Fortress Europe

From the Publisher

08/01/2016
Journalist McDonald-Gibson goes beyond mere statistics to write an incredibly compelling, in-depth look at five European refugees as they escape civil war and carnage as a result of political uncertainty. From being forced out of Syria to landing on the unwelcoming shores of Italy and Greece having lived through a tortuous journey, these first-person accounts collected from countless interviews offer a fresh perspective and fervent call to action on a subject that has increasing global interest and impact. As the author points out, no one should be turning a blind eye. There is a lot of detail, including maps and sources for further reading, yet sometimes the information is overwhelming and difficult to follow. Without some background knowledge or seeking out the sources provided, portions of the text could prove challenging, despite Gibson's effort to make this work accessible to all. In the same vein, the topic of how to aid refugees is a controversial one; this moving story may only interest those already on the side of the issue Gibson is promoting. VERDICT Well-composed and well-researched, with the satisfaction of human interest stories, this title belongs in all collections for its timeliness and historical and political significance.—Kaitlin Malixi, formerly at Virginia Beach P.L.

Library Journal

★ 2016-06-30
Giving faces to the headline stories about the flood of immigrants seeking asylum in Europe.McDonald-Gibson, a Brussels-based correspondent for the Independent and TIME, has covered international affairs for the past 13 years. Looking behind the headlines, she chronicles the experiences of five immigrants and their families to provide a scaffold for understanding the turmoil in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East that has driven more than 1.5 million people to leave their homes and families since 2011. “For decades,” writes the author, “hopes of a better life had pushed people to Europe's unwelcoming shores,” some in the hope of finding work and others to escape the chaotic conditions of civil war or to avoid military conscription. McDonald-Gibson’s stories are all poignant, and she begins with Majid Hussain, from a wealthy Nigerian family. In 2011, he saw his Muslim father murdered by a Christian mob. On the run, he escaped to Libya, but as an undocumented immigrant, his situation was precarious, and he was forced to flee again, this time to a refugee camp in Italy (he gained asylum in 2013). Hussain was one of the lucky ones who escaped; many died on the way. McDonald-Gibson blames this on the failure of the European Union to give refugees the opportunity to immigrate legally and to welcome them on arrival, and she pinpoints the so-called Arab Spring as a turning point. While European politicians hailed the uprisings, they failed to come through with tangible support for those forced to flee. This helped to create the perfect environment for the development of a lucrative illegal immigration industry. Furthermore, thousands still languish in refugee camps, a situation that has provided a recruitment opportunity for the Islamic State group and other radical organizations. Skillfully weaving together the tragic stories of her subjects, McDonald-Gibson successfully humanizes them and provides readers a much-needed inside look at a significant problem. A powerfully written, well-documented account of a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions.

Kirkus Reviews