On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu is a shockingly visceral portrayal of a young Afghan family's escape from Kabul and their perilous voyage to Melbourne, Australia. Yu captures with poetic grace the bewildering emotions of abandoning the lingering comforts of a home too dangerous to live in, from the taste of local fruit to the smiles of friends and the surprising predictability of daily life in a war zone.
Firuzeh was born amid the shuddering sounds of gunfire, followed a few years later by a brother, Nour. The children call their mother and father Abay and Atay. As they leave Kabul and travel to Peshawar in Pakistan, Abay and Atay spin elaborate folktales of bravery and adventure to distract the children from the uncertainties of their journey.
When the boy and girl ask, "Where's Australia?" Atay replies, "I don't know. But it's safe." At the mercy of traffickers for whom "borders were like jump ropes," the family is flown from Peshawar to Jakarta, Indonesia. The journey from Jakarta to their final destination is beset with trauma, including a typhoon and an extended stay at a detention facility where refugees are treated like criminals, and where their dignity is confiscated along with their cellphones.
An award-winning author of speculative fiction, Yu's debut offers a heartbreakingly innocent and occasionally humorous lens through which the oft-bickering Firuzeh and Nour experience life in Melbourne. Their parents, in pursuing stability and freedom, realize too late that the cost is unacceptably high, an impossible choice captured with stunning and devastatingly simple prose. --Shahina Piyarali, writer and freelance reviewer