The Boat People
(OverDrive MP3 Audiobook, OverDrive Listen)

Sharon Bala. (2018). The Boat People. Unabridged McClelland & Stewart.

Sharon Bala. 2018. The Boat People. McClelland & Stewart.

Sharon Bala, The Boat People. McClelland & Stewart, 2018.

Sharon Bala. The Boat People. Unabridged McClelland & Stewart, 2018.

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The Boat People

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2018-03-02T11:18:00-05:00

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   • fileAs: Bala, Sharon
   • bioText: Sharon Bala lives in St. John’s where she is a member of The Port Authority writing group. Her short story “Butter Tea at Starbucks” won the prestigious Writers’ Trust / McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize in 2017.  The Boat People is her first novel. Please visit SharonBala.com.
     
     Athena Karkanis is currently working on the 6th and final season of House of Cards. She was recently seen (concealing her pregnancy) as the villain on the third and final season of CBS’s Zoo. Athena is known for her role as Dani Khalil opposite Mark Strong and Lennie James on AMC’s acclaimed series Low Winter Sun. She can also be seen on Suits, The Expanse, The Lottery, The Border, Murdoch Mysteries, Ransom, in three of the Saw movies and more. Her voice can be heard on dozens of cartoons, video games.
   • name: Sharon Bala
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2018-01-09T00:00:00-05:00

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title

The Boat People

fullDescription

By the winner of The Journey Prize, and inspired by a real incident, The Boat People is a gripping and morally complex novel about a group of refugees who survive a perilous ocean voyage to reach Canada – only to face the threat of deportation and accusations of terrorism in their new land.
 
When the rusty cargo ship carrying Mahindan and five hundred fellow refugees reaches the shores of British Columbia, the young father is overcome with relief: he and his six-year-old son can finally put Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war behind them and begin new lives. Instead, the group is thrown into prison, with government officials and news headlines speculating that hidden among the “boat people” are members of a terrorist militia. As suspicion swirls and interrogation mounts, Mahindan fears the desperate actions he took to survive and escape Sri Lanka now jeopardize his and his son’s chances for asylum.
            Told through the alternating perspectives of Mahindan; his lawyer Priya, who reluctantly represents the migrants; and Grace, a third-generation Japanese-Canadian adjudicator who must decide Mahindan’s fate, The Boat People is a high-stakes novel that offers a deeply compassionate lens through which to view the current refugee crisis. Inspired by real events, with vivid scenes that move between the eerie beauty of northern Sri Lanka and combative refugee hearings in Vancouver, where life and death decisions are made, Sharon Bala’s stunning debut is an unforgettable and necessary story for our times.

reviews

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   • content:

     November 13, 2017
     A reckoning between Canada’s historic ideals and its contemporary politics is forced in this timely and engrossing debut novel based on the arrival of 500 refugees from war-torn Sri Lanka in 2010. After a voyage aboard a ship “groaning under the weight of too much human cargo,” Mahindan and his son land with their fellow fleeing Tamils near Vancouver, woefully unprepared for the trials that still await them. Grace has been appointed to arbitrate their fitness to enter the country by a politician who instructs her, “Canada has a reputation
     for being a soft touch.... We must disabuse the world of that notion.” The government’s attempt to cast the refugees as terrorists leads to protracted admissibility hearings, forcing Mahindan’s son into foster care and dimming his dreams of freedom. Skillfully braiding Grace’s and Mahindan’s perspectives, Bala manages wrings drama from the endless bureaucratic delays that make up the story. Hope only arrives once Grace’s mother begins sharing stories of their Japanese-Canadian family’s internment during World War II, leading Grace to reassess the ruthless approach expected of her; conversely, Bala’s gradual reveal of the nastiness Mahindan engaged in to escape Sri Lanka complicates his otherwise sympathetic portrayal. This is a powerful debut.

2. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     May 1, 2018
     

     In Canadian novelist Bala's debut, a 60-meter freighter reaches British Columbia in 2009, carrying 500 survivors of Sri Lanka's brutal civil war. The arrivals are herded into detention centers by a government fearful of terrorists hidden among these "boat people." Mahindran and his six-year-old son Sellian are among the asylum seekers assigned to legal counsel Priya Rajakaran, whose initially reluctant involvement inspires interest in her own family's Sri Lankan immigration. Adjudicator Grace Nakamura, whose grandparents and mother spent World War II imprisoned solely because of their Japanese ancestry, will determine Mahindran's future. Seamlessly navigating three separate backstories, Athena Karkanis proves herself a remarkable narrator, adeptly portraying the personalities of a sprawling cast, including Sellian's tantrums, Priya's uncle's confessions, Grace's mother's dementia-strangled demands, and many more. VERDICT Inspired by the real-life 2009-10 arrival of 550 Tamil refugees on two ships in British Columbia, Bala bestows unforgettable individual identities onto urgent headlines that Karkanis then embodies with exceptional fluency and ease. ["By empathetically exploring each character's backstory, Bala presents the complex task of balancing a nation's desire to be compassionate with the need to identify threats to national security, providing a timely examination of the refugee crisis worldwide": LJ 2/1/18 review of the Doubleday hc.]--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

     Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

popularity

449

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shortDescription

By the winner of The Journey Prize, and inspired by a real incident, The Boat People is a gripping and morally complex novel about a group of refugees who survive a perilous ocean voyage to reach Canada – only to face the threat of deportation and accusations of terrorism in their new land.
 
When the rusty cargo ship carrying Mahindan and five hundred fellow refugees reaches the shores of British Columbia, the young father is overcome with relief: he and his six-year-old son can finally put Sri Lanka’s bloody civil war behind them and begin new lives. Instead, the group is thrown into prison, with government officials and news headlines speculating that hidden among the “boat people” are members of a terrorist militia. As suspicion swirls and interrogation mounts, Mahindan fears the desperate actions he took to survive and escape Sri Lanka now jeopardize his and his son’s chances for asylum.
    ...

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