![]() ![]() ![]() The Boat People begins in 2009 aboard “a sixty-metre freighter, past its prime and jerry-rigged for five hundred passengers,” refugees fleeing the war in Sri Lanka. Rooted in actual events, Bala uses the tools of fiction to excavate the human truths hidden under the headlines. John’s, Newfoundland writer Sharon Bala (who was awarded the Journey Prize for short fiction last fall) chronicles the arrival of a group of Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka on Canada’s west coast. ![]() With her debut novel The Boat People, St. It might seem strange, initially, but sometimes the greatest clarity comes not from the news, but from fiction. ![]() What do we know of political turmoil halfway around the world? How are we supposed to react? And where do we go to learn more? Most of us, no matter our sympathies, are having a hard time keeping up. Bodies wash up on European beaches while asylum seekers cross the Canadian border from an increasingly hostile United States. Success stories about Syrian refugees in Canada share space with bitter, parochial railing from both the comments sections and the political right. We are in the midst of an ongoing refugee crisis according to the United Nations, more than 65 million people were displaced, driven from their homes, in 2017 alone. ![]()
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