What Strange Paradise

Content warning: This Themes section contains references to distressing scenes (including the death of children), xenophobia, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Hotel Xenios is the central, orienting point in the geography of Vänna’s island in What Strange Paradise. The Calypso capsizes just offshore, and Amir and the other victims of the shipwreck wash up on beach of the hotel’s resort grounds. El Akkad’s choice to name the hotel Xenios is ironic: the word xenios is the ancient Greek word for “stranger,” as well as the root of the word “xenophobia,” the fear and mistrust of strangers and foreigners. However, the concept of xenios had different connotations for the islanders’ ancestors than it does for Kethros and his contemporaries. Zeus, the head god of the Greek Pantheon, was sometimes called “Zeus Xenios,” celebrating his role as a protector and avenger of strangers. The ancient Greeks idealized hospitality, or “xenia;” to fail to be practice xenia, i.e., to not be hospitable to guests and strangers, was socially taboo and considered offensive. Because of this, the hotel’s name satirizes the exclusionary function of resorts. On the one hand, it welcomes strangers, in the form of the foreign tourists that visit the island—but only if they afford to be there.