Although separated by continents and decades, Josef, a Jewish boy living in 1930s Nazi Germany; Isabel, a Cuban girl trying to escape the riots and unrest plaguing her country in 1994; and Mahmoud, a Syrian boy in 2015 whose homeland is torn apart by violence and destruction, embark on harrowing journeys in search of refuge, discovering shocking connections that tie their stories together.

A Finalist for the 2019 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction
"Nayeri combines her own experience with those of refugees she meets as an adult, telling their stories with tenderness and reverence.” —The New York Times Book Review
"Nayeri weaves her empowering personal story with those of the ‘feared swarms’ . . . Her family’s escape from Isfahan to Oklahoma, which involved waiting in Dubai and Italy, is wildly fascinating...

"Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. It was 1994, and in 100 days more than 800,000 people would be murdered in Rwanda and millions more displaced. Clemantine and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, ran and spent the next six years wandering through seven African countries searching for...

"Nuri is a beekeeper; his wife, Afra, an artist. They live a simple life, rich in family and friends, in the beautiful Syrian city of Aleppo -- until the unthinkable happens. When all they care for is destroyed by war, they are forced to escape. But what Afra has seen is so terrible she has gone blind, and so they must embark on a perilous journey through Turkey and Greece towards an uncertain future in Britain. As Nuri and Afra travel through a broken...

   On a pier in Marseille in 1942, with desperate refugees pressing to board one of the last ships to escape France before the Nazis choked off its ports, an 18-year-old German Jewish girl was pried from the arms of the Catholic Frenchman she loved and promised to marry.  As the Lipari carried Janine and her family to Casablanca on the first leg of a perilous journey to safety in Cuba, she would read through her tears

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A collection of stories, written over a twenty-year period, examines the Vietnamese experience in America as well as questions of home, family, and identity.

Four hundred asylum seekers were pitched into the sea when their people-smuggling boat from Indonesia sank on its way to Australia in 2001. Three hundred and fifty three people drowned. Only seven survivors made it to Australia. Amal Basry was one of those survivors, spending 22 hours in the ocean hanging on to a floating corpse, convinced that her son was dead and she was the only person left alive. Acclaimed documentary maker Steve Thomas records...

The village of Three Pines, a refuge from the modern world in the beautiful Eastern Townships, basks in the tranquil glory of its autumn colours. But the blazing woods conceal the body of a much-loved teacher - shot through the heart with an arrow. A tragic hunting accident or murder? Charismatic Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team of officers probe to discover deep layers of deceit, resentment, and murderous rage in the pretty village.

A Buddhist nun, a fashion designer, a student and a playwright - their paths have never crossed yet they have common experiences in their struggle for identity, maintaining a connection to their cultural roots and reconciling two worlds: Vietnam and Australia. Just over 30 years ago, the first wave of non-European refugees - Vietnamese refugees - arrived in Australia. Their homeland had been torn apart by war and most were not looking for a new life,...

They arrive under age and alone, often traumatized and seeking asylum in a country completely alien to their own. In some provinces, specifically Ontario, these unaccompanied refugee minors have surprisingly no government system in place for their care after arriving. This documentary is a cinematic portrait of a year in the life of two such teenagers, Joyce and Sallieu. They seem like your typical teenagers, except that reserved Sallieu, 16, witnessed...