Large scale disasters can be extremely challenging to write. You often need to introduce numerous characters before you even discuss the disaster itself. Crucially, when the catastrophe does hit, the story needs to move with a frenetic pace to ensure the reader feels the stress, heroism, and heartbreak. Jeanne Carstensen meets all of these challenges seemingly effortlessly in A Greek Tragedy.

Carstensen recounts the October 2015 shipwreck of an overloaded refugee boat trying to reach a small Greek island from Turkey. I remember this story when it happened and the tremendous loss of life which followed. I was hoping that the book would be informative without being dragged down by needless facts that don't affect the story which is a hazard of the genre. Carstensen's introduction of the characters is truly a master class in how to introduce people and make them stand out as individuals without bogging down the overall narrative. Over a dozen people are part of the story and yet I never felt impatient to move along. The author uses these people to tell the wider story of all the refugees and the rescuers who would throw themselves into the water.

Quite simply, A Greek Tragedy is done well in every single aspect you could as for as a reader. It is insightful, informative, heartbreaking, enraging, and hopeful all in one.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Atria Books.)

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for this complementary ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This book takes the reader through the modern refugee crisis taking place in Europe, specifically a horrible shipwreck that occurred in 2015 off the coast of Greece. The author does a fantastic job painting the full scene by focusing on a handful of passengers that survived the wreck and were willing to talk about their experiences. Rescuers, volunteers, doctors and all others involved were also included in the story to really give layers to the story.

I read this book very quickly - although I could have simply searched the internet to get details on the story, I much preferred reading the story through the author's point of view. There was no sugar coating of the underlying issue that still has no viable solution. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to get a better understanding of the challenges and risks that refugees face.

This was a great nonfiction book and how it worked overall as a way of telling the true story of this shipwreck. It had that World War 2 part that I was looking for and had the research that I was looking for. Jeanne Carstensen wrote this perfectly and was glad I got to read this.