Papers, an extraordinary book that tells stories of asylum seekers in France

Plus, book club this month on Alexander Chee’s Edinburgh

We arrived in Paris in 2013 and 2014, shortly before the migrant “crisis” began. A confluence of geopolitical catastrophes—civil wars in Libya and Syria, a new phase in the war in Iraq that saw the rise of the radical group ISIS—pushed millions of people out of their countries and in the direction of Europe. In 2015 alone, more than 1.3 million people sought asylum there, the largest number since World War II. 

We tried our best to come to terms with the situation as we watched the influx of migrants fundamentally change the city, the country, the national politics. In the meantime, there were the related, if not directly linked, political crises in Paris, such as the Charlie Hebdo shootings and the November 2015 attacks, which further shifted the way people conceived of who was European and not European, French and not French. One of our dearest colleagues at our university, Ziad Majed, a leading expert and activist on the Syrian War, gave inspiring talks almost every day on the histo…