Lauren Markham

"A provocative, virtuosic inquiry that reveals how the valorization of times and migrations past are intimately linked to our exclusion and demonization of migrants in the present. When and how did migration become a crime? Why did "Greek ideals" become foundational to the West's idea of itself? How have our personal migration myths -and our nostalgia for a lost world of clear borders and values - shaped our troubling new realities? In 2020, Lauren Markham went to Greece to cover the burning of a refugee camp on Lesbos. Some said the refugees had done it, to destroy what had become their prison. Others said it was the island's fascists, or the government itself, enraged at the burden they bore for an overwhelming global problem. Soon - too soon - six young Afghan refugees were arrested. As she immersed herself in the reporting, Markham - an American of Greek heritage who had been working with and writing about migrants for more than a decade - saw that the story she was reporting was part of a larger tapestry, with roots not only in centuries of history but in the myths we tell ourselves about who we are. In this mesmerizing, trailblazing synthesis of reporting, history, memoir, and essay, A Map of Future Ruins makes us realize that the stories we tell about migration don't just explain what happened. They are oracles: they predict the future"--