All Else Failed: The Unlikely Volunteers at the Heart of the Migrant Aid Crisis

Journalist and novelist Sachs (The Secret of the Nightingale Palace) delivers a moving eyewitness account of the 2015–2019 refugee crisis in Greece and the grassroots relief networks that emerged in response. In 2015, one million refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa crossed the Mediterranean into Europe. An estimated 3,700 people drowned during the journey, while Greece, burdened with an economic crisis, struggled to help those who made it to shore. With the world’s major humanitarian organizations and the E.U. constricted by their own internal rules and slow-moving bureaucracy, dozens of ad hoc volunteer organizations fed and cared for the displaced. Sachs describes dystopian refugee camps devoid of basic comforts such as beds, running water, and electricity, and profiles refugees including the Khalil family, who fled Syria with the help of smugglers and lived in a makeshift camp in a gas station and a squat in Athens before they were granted asylum by Germany. Throughout, Sachs interweaves incisive analysis of such policies as the E.U.’s plan to give Turkey €3 billion in refugee aid in exchange for clamping down on “irregular migration” with heartfelt profiles of migrants and aid workers. This is a stunning portrait of hardship, despair, and resilience. Agent: Douglas Stewart, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Mar.)