25 Million Sparks

Andrew Leon Hanna spent years inside Za'atari, one of the world's largest refugee camps, following three Syrian women — a bridal shop owner, a young artist, and a storytelling program founder — as they built something out of almost nothing. The book expands from their stories to cover refugee entrepreneurship across more than twenty camps and cities, anchored in research showing refugees are one and a half to two times more entrepreneurial than native-born citizens. Named a Financial Times Best Book of 2022 and winner of the Bracken Bower Prize, it humanizes a population too often described only by their needs. The honest caveat noted by reviewers is that the book can idealize its subjects and leave harder systemic realities underexplored. It is more portrait than policy prescription. For readers who want to see refugee communities with clarity and dignity rather than pity, this is worth the afternoon it takes to read.