Seven top novels set in refugee camps

Helen Benedict, a British-American professor at Columbia University, is the author of eight novels and six books of nonfiction, several of which feature refugees and war. Her latest nonfiction on refugees is Map of Hope and Sorrow: Stories of Refugees Trapped in Greece, co-authored with Syrian writer, Eyad Awwadawnan.

[My Book, The Movie: Sand Queen; The Page 69 Test: Sand Queen; The Page 69 Test: Wolf Season]

Benedict's new novel is The Good Deed.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven novels set in refugee camps; in each novel "the overarching theme is not misery but love, whether for a romantic partner, a parent, sibling, friend, or child." One title on the list:

The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine

This novel, too, is set in Lesbos, but in contrast to Lefteri’s approach, Alameddine, a Lebanese American author, tells the story of the refugee camp from the point of view of a volunteer who goes there to help, rather than that of the refugees themselves.

The novel’s narrator is Mina Simpson, a Lebanese doctor who is lesbian and trans, a fact that informs much of the novel. Mina arrives on the island more absorbed in her own story—her alienation from her family because of her sexual identity, her love story with her wife, her love for her brother—than in those of the refugees. Yet, even as she keeps spinning into her own memories in a jokey, somewhat cynical voice, oddly unaffected by the suffering around her, she is soon drawn into the drama of a Syrian family just off a boat, the brave matriarch secretly ill with cancer. In the course of trying to help the woman, Mina learns how much the refugees are suffering, and how inadequate and even clueless most volunteer help is. As many a do-gooder has said, no matter what you do, it is never enough.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue