A journalist joins his Afghan friend’s odyssey to Europe

The Naked Don’t Fear the Water. By Matthieu Aikins. Harper; 336 pages; $27.99. Fitzcarraldo Editions; £12.99

IN THE AUTUMN of 2016 two young men were deposited in Moria refugee camp (pictured), a notorious detention centre on the Greek island of Lesbos. They had just braved a dangerous crossing in a dinghy from Turkey, on their way from Afghanistan to Europe. But the pair were not quite what they seemed. One was Afghan; the other was an undercover Canadian journalist, who was accompanying his friend on his perilous journey to a new life.

Both were shocked by the squalor they encountered, the result of a fire that had gutted the camp the previous week. As well as the grim conditions, the men had to contend with souring attitudes towards newcomers across Europe. More than a million migrants and refugees reached the continent by sea in 2015, but, a year on, countries were increasingly putting up fences and closing their borders. With public hostility outstripping sympathy, the road to asylum became more difficult, as the swelling number of detainees at the camp on Lesbos demonstrated.

Matthieu Aikins, a journalist partly of Japanese descent, had been working in Afghanistan or seven years when he agreed to make the trip with Omar, his pseudonymous companion. They had developed a close...