Barrie for the rest of his life and it can almost be traced to the direct origin point of Peter Pan years later. Barrie’s older brother was 13, he died in a skating accident and his mother never recovered, she was crushed by it and it very much influenced J.M. “The way that we think of Peter Pan now as a story is entirely different from its origins,” El Akkad says. Not the Disney movie or jaunty musical adaptations, of course, but the decidedly darker original by J.M. In fact, the one piece of literature that most inspired the novel was Peter Pan.
While the novel may explore how the darker elements of human nature and privilege can lead to this quickly evaporating “temporary outrage” and the notion that some lives are worth more than others, the story also has a fable-like quality. Still, that initial image of a boy and girl at the edge of a forest and on the verge of a grand adventure is important. In a lot of ways, What Strange Paradise is a book written against the idea of the privilege of temporary outrage.” “That, more than anything else, that’s what stuck with me. “Almost within 24 hours, all the outrage subsided and everybody moved on and everyone stopped caring,” El Akkad says. Later, he read about a ship of refugees that went down in the Mediterranean Sea while en route to Europe. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. “So there was this notion of ‘helping our Arab brothers and sisters’ and how that quickly went out the window whenever there’s someone to be exploited.” “Syria and Egypt used to be one country for a while,” says El Akkad. His friend said there were two prices: one for locals and a more expensive rate for desperate Syrian refugees who had no choice but to pay whatever was demanded. After covering the Arab Spring for the Globe and Mail, for instance, the Egyptian-born writer met with a friend in Cairo and asked a seemingly simple question about how much he paid for rent at his building. Please try again Article contentīut as a former journalist who has covered the war in Afghanistan, detention at Guantanamo Bay, mass protests in Ferguson, Miss., and the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt, El Akkad also had plenty of experiences that provided darker and more direct inspiration for the novel. The next issue of Calgary Herald Headline News will soon be in your inbox.
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