In recent years, the refugee problem has become impossible to ignore, as multiple crises in the Middle East and Africa have driven thousands of desperate people to attempt Mediterranean crossings in hopes of reaching Europe, and safety. Many have died en route, and those who make it face a far from certain future, as European governments have proved reluctant to fully acknowledge, let alone commit to ameliorating, their plight.

In Charges (The Supplicants), Nobel Prize–winning writer Elfriede Jelinek offers a powerful analysis of the plight of refugees, from ancient times to the present. Drawing on sources as widely separated in time and intent as up-to-the-minute blog postings and Aeschylus’s “The Supplicants,” Jelinek asks what refugees want, how we as a society view them, and what political, moral, and personal obligations they impose on us. In a world where insecurity seems to spread by the day, and even the comfort many in the West take for granted begins to seem threatened, Charges (The Supplicants) is a timely, unflinching account of how we treat those who come to us in need.