![]() ![]() ![]() “After” is set on the Greek island where the bodies of those on the boat wash up. The story is presented in alternating chapters marked “Before” and “After.” “Before” describes nine-year-old Amir’s life as a Syrian refugee – the family settles in Alexandria, Egypt – and what happens on the doomed boat. The novel tells of the shipwreck of a rickety boat, its passengers from Africa and the Middle East on a desperate, dangerous trip to the Greek Island of Kos – and it tells of freedom. … And I’ll take that over any MFA in the world any day.” “But those experiences constituted a kind of writing education that otherwise I don’t think I would have ever gotten. ![]() Which is not to say that I got it right or that I have any right to continue writing fiction based on the things that I used to write non-fiction about,” he says. I had a front row seat to so much of history. “Those 10 years at The Globe and Mail were my education. “I think probably for the rest of my life the residual experiences and memories from my decade in journalism are going to worm their way into my fiction,” says El Akkad, 39, from Portland, Ore., where he now lives. ![]()
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