Reaching Mithymna: Among the Volunteers and Refugees on Lesvos

Written by Steven Heighton

Narrated by Michael Braun

In the fall of 2015, Steven Heighton made an overnight decision to travel to the frontlines of the Syrian refugee crisis in Greece and enlist as a volunteer. He
arrived on the isle of Lesvos with a duffel bag and a dubious grasp of Greek, his mother’s native tongue, and worked on the landing beaches and in OXY—a
jerrybuilt, ad hoc transit camp providing simple meals, dry clothes, and a brief rest to refugees after their crossing from Turkey. In a town deserted by the tourists
that had been its lifeblood, Heighton—alongside the exhausted locals and underequipped international aid workers—found himself thrown into emergency roles
for which he was woefully unqualified.

From the brief reprieves of volunteer-refugee soccer matches to the riots of Camp Moria, Reaching Mithymna is a gripping firsthand account of the crisis and
an engaged exploration of the borders that divide us and the ties that bind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781705027868

Steven Heighton

STEVEN HEIGHTON (1961-2022)’s most recent books were the novel The Nightingale Won’t Let You Sleep (Hamish Hamilton, 2017), the Governor General’s Literary Award–winning poetry collection The Waking Comes Late (House of Anansi Press, 2016), and the memoir Reaching Mithymna (Biblioasis, 2020), which was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. He was also the author of the novel Afterlands, which was published in six countries, was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, and was a “best of year” selection from ten publications in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. The novel was optioned for film by Pall Grimsson. His other poetry collections include The Ecstasy of Skeptics and The Address Book. His fiction and poetry have been translated into ten languages, have appeared in the London Review of Books, Tin House, Poetry, Brick, the Independent, the Literary Review, and The Walrus Magazine, among others; have been internationally anthologized in Best English Stories, Best American Poetry, The Minerva Book of Stories, and Best American Mystery Stories; and have won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry, the Gerald Lampert Award, the K. M. Hunter Award, the P. K. Page Founders’ Award, the Petra Kenney Prize, the Air Canada Award, and four gold National Magazine Awards. In addition, Heighton was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Trillium Book Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Journey Prize, the Moth Prize, and Britain’s W. H. Smith Award. Heighton was also a fiction reviewer for the New York Times Book Review. He lived in Kingston, Ontario. In 2021, Wolfe Island Records released an album of his songs, The Devil’s Share. To listen, visit www.wolfeislandrecords.com/stevenheighton. 

Reviews for Reaching Mithymna

[icolford · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the late fall of 2015 Steven Heighton impulsively left home and offered his services as an aid worker on the Greek island of Lesvos. This was during the worst moments of a humanitarian crisis of staggering proportions, when hundreds of thousands of desperate people were fleeing the Syrian Civil War. Lesvos, located a mere ten kilometers from Turkey’s western coast, is a natural landing point for refugees being smuggled into Europe. Then, as now, traffickers were taking full advantage of that proximity. In Reaching Mithymna, Heighton’s memoir of a month spent among the volunteers and refugees, he arrives with little notion of what he will be doing and who he’ll be doing it with. It is not an easy transition, from naïve Canadian writer insulated from much of the world’s turmoil to front-line aid worker rolling up his sleeves and trying to convince himself he’s ready for anything that comes his way. But Heighton jumps headlong into the fray, making plenty of mistakes but learning as he goes, about himself as much as the situation unfolding before his eyes. The book is a clear-eyed chronicle that places its focus squarely on the people the author encounters: exhausted volunteers approaching burnout, anxious and despairing refugees—families, men and women of all ages—who have left behind the ruins of their lives and risked everything for an uncertain future. Heighton’s narrative takes an even-handed approach. He makes no arguments or moral judgments in these pages. He does not try to convince us of anything. He lets the facts speak for themselves, and some of those facts are more than simply harrowing. In many respects the book is concerned with belonging—Heighton’s own mother was Greek and he is haunted by the remnants of a heritage that he has neglected. The flow of refugees on their way to other places is ceaseless, and he can’t help but wonder what will become of them and how they will be received when they reach their various destinations. In the end, as he approaches his return to Canada, the author is frazzled by his experience and more than a little disillusioned by yet another example of human willingness to inflict horrific suffering on other humans. He finishes by telling us, “Nobody ever changes until they have to.” Hopefully the change, when it comes, will empower those who care to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.