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The Optician of Lampedusa

The Optician of Lampedusa

by EmmaJaneKirby (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2016

    $3.24
Synopsis

From an award-winning BBC journalist, this moving book turns the testimony of an accidental hero into a timeless story about the awakening of human courage and conscience. 'I can hardly begin to describe to you what I saw as our boat approached the source of that terrible noise. I hardly want to. You won't understand because you weren't there. You can't understand. You see, I thought I'd heard seagulls screeching. Seagulls fighting over a lucky catch. Birds. Just birds.' Emma-Jane Kirby has reported extensively on the reality of mass migration today. In The Optician of Lampedusa she brings to life the moving testimony of an ordinary man whose late summer boat trip off a Sicilian island unexpectedly turns into a tragic rescue mission.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 128
 Publisher: Allen Lane
Published: 29 Sep 2016
ISBN 10: 0241295289
ISBN 13: 9780241295281
Book Overview: The Optician of Lampedusa lives a quiet life with his wife on a remote Mediterranean island. He has seen the headlines about shipwrecked migrants, noticed the reception centre, even crossed paths with the occasional lost soul. Yet it is only when, one sunny October morning, a relaxing boat trip with friends unexpectedly turns into a heartbreaking rescue mission, that he truly comes face to

Media Reviews
Poetically written, absorbing, harrowing . . . a moving and unusual achievement -- Fiona Wilson * The Times *
An important book. . . I cried all the way through -- Tracy Chevalier
An ambitious and important book that goes far beyond the voyeurism of 24-hour news to identify something timeless and troubling... a moral tale, following events through the eyes of the fastidiously ordinary optician never named in the text and thereby transformed into an everyman . . . Emma Jane Kirby challenges us to do more than cry. -- Peter Stanford * Observer *
A novelistic retelling of a man's tragic encounter with the European migrant crisis - a true story that brings a fresh perspective to events that are often hard to visualise. -- Melissa Lawford * Financial Times *
An eloquent, extraordinary story for our times * Tablet, Book of the Year *
A moving insight * Financial Times, Book of the Year *
A book that can be devoured as if it were a novel, but in which everything is true. * Le Parisien *
A heartfelt story . . . at once horrifying and comforting * Le Soir *
Deeply moving. . . this is a tale of transformation, of a man just like you and me. * Journal du Dimanche *
With skill and composure that marks it as a work of literature rather than a journalistic report, Emma-Jane Kirby explores closely the innermost upheaval of one human being faced with the tragedy of another: the cause of such suffering is born of guilt, but also of a sense of humanity born of uncontrollable empathy. * La Croix *
A shock to the system, it forces us to think. . . the optician is an ordinary man, no better no worse than us. * France 2 *
Author Bio
Emma-Jane Kirby is a broadcast journalist who has reported extensively on international affairs, from Brussels to Afghanistan. She won the Bayeux-Calvados Award for War Correspondents for her report 'The Optician of Lampedusa', on which this book is based.