Cast Away: stories of survival from Europe’s refugee crisis
CHARLOTTE McDONALD-GIBSON
It’s far easier to grasp the reality of a great crisis when we experience it through the eyes of one individual – think Anne Frank or Malala Yousafzai. We tend to only think of Europe’s extraordinary migrant crisis in terms of brute statistics, and with brief exceptions such as the poignant photographs of little Alan Kurdi lying lifeless on a Turkish beach, the story is depicted in terms of mass movements of people or unedifying wrangling between politicians.
All of which is a world away from the everyday drama of ordinary Syrians, Afghans and Africans weighing up whether to leave their homes and family in the hope of finding security in Europe. In Cast Away, the journalist Charlotte McDonald-Gibson brings the reality of migration alive through the stories of five different individuals.
