Ten top refugees' stories

Patrick Kingsley is the author of The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe’s Refugee Crisis. One of his top ten accounts of forced migration, as shared at the Guardian:

Virgil’s Aeneid

I’ve named my new book about the refugee crisis The New Odyssey, after Homer’s famous epic. But if it were better known, a more fitting namesake would have been Virgil’s Aeneid. Like today’s Syrians, Aeneas flees an ancient war in the Middle East and crosses the Mediterranean in search of safety. He eventually finds it in Italy – and founds the dynasty that would later spawn the Roman empire. Startling as it might be for some, the roots of European civilisation stem in part from the story of a refugee.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Aeneid is among Madeline Miller's top ten classical books.

--Marshal Zeringue