Emma Kirby's novel is actually a fictionalized version of a life-transforming event affecting the life of an Italian optician who assumed the role of an unexpected Good Samaritan during a leisure cruise in the Mediterranean Sea. When the unexpected nocturnal cries of 'seagulls' turn out to be the desperate screams for help on the part of drowning African migrants, the eponymous optician and his entourage are shaken out of their self-indulgent complacency and turn to help as many survivors as possible. There is a real Everyman aspect to this beautiful story, a test of one's ethical fibre during
a trial which fate may impose us at anytime. Regardless of one's opinion about the incredibly complex migrant crisis, it is impossible to remain indifferent in the face of so much suffering especially when the optician is overcome by the need to know the identity of the survivors he rescued. Touching, full of humanity.
The unexpected Good Samaritan
Emma Kirby's novel is actually a fictionalized version of a life-transforming event affecting the life of an Italian optician who assumed the role of an unexpected Good Samaritan during a leisure cruise in the Mediterranean Sea. When the unexpected nocturnal cries of 'seagulls' turn out to be the desperate screams for help on the part of drowning African migrants, the eponymous optician and his entourage are shaken out of their self-indulgent complacency and turn to help as many survivors as possible. There is a real Everyman aspect to this beautiful story, a test of one's ethical fibre during a trial which fate may impose us at anytime. Regardless of one's opinion about the incredibly complex migrant crisis, it is impossible to remain indifferent in the face of so much suffering especially when the optician is overcome by the need to know the identity of the survivors he rescued. Touching, full of humanity.