Die Insel

The young journalist Franziska Grillmeier has been regularly reporting on the island of Lesbos since 2018, where the refugee camp Moria and its successor camps are located. She not only reports from there but also lives on Lesbos. Over the past four years, she has immersed herself in the lives of the refugees and the local people. Her book forms an authentic mosaic of the chaos that starkly highlights our privileges.

Refugees with diverse backgrounds, island residents, political actors, and humanitarian workers are among the protagonists whose stories and perspectives shape the book. Grillmeier moves through the camp, the harbor, and the northern part of the island, closely zooming in on the state of emergency and the erosion of the rule of law at the edges of Europe, allowing the "island" to become a parable for Europe’s handling of one of the greatest humanitarian crises of our time. For readers, Lesbos serves as a magnifying glass under which social injustice in Europe takes on both vivid and dramatic forms. At the same time, the island in Grillmeier's book symbolizes European migration policy and its failures.