A riveting and heartrending look at the hidden world of refugees that challenged everything I thought I knew about the consequences of war and globalization. At the immigration counter, I handed over my passport and placed my fingertips on the green glow of the scanner, then walked to the baggage carousel and got my suitcase, wheeled it to the X-ray machine.

S. military claimed had taken out a car bomb probably engineered by ISIS in Kabul that posed a threat to U. This book is Aikins’s profound act of love — for Omar, for their travel companions and for the beleaguered people of Afghanistan, now irrevocably scattered around the world.The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. DAVIES: So all these Greek cities and islands, which were welcoming these refugees, now took a different attitude, right? But I was really trying to understand that and its impact on the people that I was traveling with to see their perspective that, you know, they weren't seeing this as a story or an adventure.

If the Taliban hope to survive, they will have to be more inclusive, and accept a wider range of political and religious opinion. One of the most valuable sections of Losing Afghanistan deals with the future of liberal interventionism. As he navigates the refugee underground, Aikins offers a kaleidoscopic view of fragmented families and dispossessed people trying and failing and scheming and planning and hoping and praying to complete the next leg of their journey — of refugees in desperate circumstances, making impossible choices based on rumors and hunches and advice from people they barely know, taking outrageous risks because they have no other options. One in 30 people on Earth is a migrant, meaning that more than 1 billion people are now on the move around the globe. The Naked Don’t Fear the Water is a compellingly original piece of work, an unforgettable narrative about one of the great human epics of our day.Aikins can at any point have his second passport mailed to him, or reveal his true identity to camp officials and leave the island. And I know in my own reporting experiences, when you're out at something where there's a lot of action, like a demonstration, or when you're on the road, it's hard to take good notes, hard to preserve them. The best way to honour this book would be for us all to read it and ask ourselves what we can do for the thousands of unknown and unrecognized people who are treading this terrifying path. Aikins was able to make this journey for some of the same reasons he was such an effective reporter in Afghanistan.