Excerpt from The New Odyssey by Patrick Kingsley, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

There's a bit of me in there too: towards the start of 2015, before migration became the year's defining European issue, my editor had the foresight to make me the Guardian's first-­ever migration correspondent. We didn't know this at the time, but it was a role that would allow me to witness the migration crisis in more breadth and depth than most. It was a job of absurd privilege. In one memorable week I went from the Sahara desert to the middle of the Mediterranean to the border of Hungary. In another I crossed nine borders while up to 1,300 other people drowned trying to cross just one. In among everything else, this book will occasionally deal with my own unlikely migrations, as I follow those of others.

Above all, The New Odyssey is the story of someone else entirely: a Syrian called Hashem al-­Souki. Every other chapter (or thereabouts) is about Hashem's quest for safety. His very personal narrative is juxtaposed with the narrative of the wider crisis, allowing us to cycle between the journey of an individual and that of the continent he passes through. Why Hashem in particular? He's no freedom fighter or superhero. He's just an ordinary Syrian. But that's why I want to tell his story. It's the story of an everyman, in whose footsteps any of us could one day tread.


Shivering in the vomit of others, tonight is just the latest indignity of Hashem's three­-year odyssey. He's a bulky forty­-year old with a gentle smile, whose greying hair makes him seem older than he is. He first left his home in Damascus in April 2012, and all that remains of his house is the key in his pocket. The rest was blown up by the Syrian army.

He thinks of his children – Osama, Mohamed and Milad – far away in Egypt. He's doing this journey so they don't have to. So that his boys and their mum, Hayam, can be legally reunited with him if he reaches the other side – and if he later reaches Sweden.

His country destroyed, Hashem reckons his hopes and dreams are over. But his children's are still worth dying for. 'I'm risking my life for something bigger, for ambitions bigger than this,' he tells me before he leaves. 'If I fail, I fail alone. But, by risking this, I might achieve a dream for three children: my children – and maybe my grandchildren as well.'

He thinks especially of Osama, the oldest. Today, 15 April 2015, is Osama's birthday. Earlier this morning, Osama's fourteenth year began with his father crying, apologising for his imminent departure, and then leaving in the knowledge that the pair might never speak again.

Excerpted from The New Odyssey by Patrick Kingsley. Copyright © 2017 by Patrick Kingsley. Excerpted by permission of Liveright / WW Norton. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.