![]() Fleeing wartorn Kabul, Afghanistan, the Daizangis endure deadly ocean squalls, inhumane treatment in a detention center off the coast of Australia, and further degradation once they reach Melbourne, as the children attend school and the parents seek work. ![]() The glimmers of joy experienced by the asylum seekers - who include young Firuzeh Daizangi, a 10-year-old when she arrives in Australia her little brother Nour and their Abay and Atay (mom and dad) - are often upstaged by the traumatic experiences of the family’s triumphant and tragic journey. Later, she reflects with Sister Margaret, saying, “I asked the wrong questions, didn’t I?” The nun responds that she, personally, would ask the detainees about joy: “When you have nothing and no reason to hope, when the odds are impossible and not one but two governments stand against you, how do you laugh? How do you see beauty? How do you still show kindness and love?” The writer spends the day peppering detention center inmates with questions about the conditions they have endured. The writer is given a tour by Sister Margaret, a nun and a tireless advocate for refugee families - including the Daizangi family, whose story forms the center of the novel. A character Yu calls “the writer” has traveled to Australia to interview asylum seekers in the Afghan migrant community there and to visit detention centers as part of her research. ![]() ![]() ![]() Lily Yu’s disquieting debut novel On Fragile Waves offers a kind of authorial self-critique regarding the representation of diasporic migrants. ![]()
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