2024
The Moria refugee camp is Europe´s prime symbol of the so-called refugee crisis of 2015. The book MORIA, named after the notorious camp, offers readers a unique insight into a dark chapter of contemporary European history.
Moria was awarded NTNUs Literature Prize of 2024.
Child psychologist and Doctors Without Boarders field worker, Katrin Glatz Brubakk, regularly worked as a volunteer and therapist in the camp from 2015 - 2022, gaining profound insight in the development of the camp and the refugees´ situation. In companianship with journalist Guro Kulset Merakerås, she has turned her eye witness experiences from the camp and the relief work on the island of Lesbos into a pageturner that combines close human portraits with historical and political overview. The book helps readers understand why Moria became the largest refugee camp in Europe and a humanitarian catastrophe unprecedented in modern Europe. Brubakk, a experienced trauma psychologist, also gives an introduction to the psychological mechanisms at play for people in a refugee situation, and the short and long term psychological consequences of becoming a refugee or migrant, living in Moria or other camps.
Norwegian reviewers praised the book as beeing "disturbingly good", "strong, educational and well-written", "a testemony of high value" and "a humantistic project that lets the migrants stuck in greek islands reenter our consciousness".
The chronicle of a non-place that became the symbol of Europe's failed refugee policy/ Die Chronik eines Unortes, der zum Symbol für Europas gescheiterte Flüchtlingspolitik wurde
A shocking account of European asylum policy from 2015 to the present day./
Eine erschütternde Bilanz der europäischen Asylpolitik von 2015 bis heute.
Disturbingly good
A particular strength of the book is the elegant and convincing alternation between narratives of individual persons and general human experience.
An extraordinarily rich and insightful presentation of one of the most important and dramatic chapters in European contemporary history
Katrin Glatz Brubakk and Guro Kulset Merakerås
Camilla s. Moe/ Prud
