“Every refugee’s story opens in horror, passes through betrayal, and ends in a question.”
This sentence, spoken by a protagonist in my new novel, The Good Deed, came to me on one of my visits to the overcrowded, fetid refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos. I began going there in 2018 when I learned that the island had become a major gateway to Europe for people fleeing war or persecution in the Middle East and Africa. I wanted to see for myself how people live from day to day in such inhumane conditions, and how they manage to cope with the trauma and tragedy they left behind.