A Greek Tragedy

by Carstensen, Jeanne

• ISBN13: 9781668083147
• ISBN10: 1668083140
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2025-03-25
• Publisher: Atria/One Signal Publishers

Summary

Five Days at Memorial meets Into the Raging Sea with this harrowing and moving true story of a devastating shipwreck during the biggest refugee crisis since World War II.

On October 28, 2015, a boat meant for a few dozen people capsized off the coast of the Greek Island of Lesvos, spilling hundreds of refugees into the Aegean Sea. The resulting loss of life, the largest amount in a single day during the current refugee crisis, brought this ongoing emergency into sharp, international focus.

Now, after nearly a decade of research and investigation, reporter Jeanne Carstensen effortlessly recounts the twenty-four hours during which the event unfolded, unpacking every complicated inch of this global crisis. Featuring firsthand accounts from the desperate refugees, the smugglers who risked their lives, and the heroic islanders who did their best to help, even as their government and the European Union failed to act, A Greek Tragedy is an unforgettable and necessary testament of our times.

Author Biography

Jeanne Carstensen is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and many other publications. She covered the Syrian refugee crisis in Greece, Turkey, and Europe from 2015 to 2017 with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. She is a 2019 Logan Nonfiction Fellow and a 2018 Squaw Valley Writers Workshop participant, and she won a National Arts Journalism Program fellowship at Columbia University for her cultural reporting. Find out more at JeanneCarstensen.net.