“The past was so immense,” writes Téa Obreht in the Morningside. “Overcoming it would be a true feat.” And indeed in Obreht’s latest novel, the world seems to stagger under the burden of its own history. It’s a familiar reality not far from ours that is deep in the throes of climate change where even luxury is crumbling, in which refugees struggle to find a material and spiritual home, and where pretty much everyone seems to be mourning the loss of some antecedent state. Existence itself appears to be rusting and falling apart, and no one is quite sure what to do about it.

The novel’s lead—11-year-old Sil—was “born in a place that no longer exists” due to what is hinted to have been a grisly war, which forced her and her mother to seek refuge on an island city reminiscent of Manhattan bearing evidence that it is simultaneously recovering from and on the brink of disaster. They’ve come as part of a “Repopulation Program” that gathers refugees from around the world to resettle urban spaces that have dwindled due to the climate crisis, residing in a dilapidated high-rise called the Morningside where Sil struggles to find her place amidst grim loneliness and vague memories of “Back Home.”

While this lost homeland is never named, the Slavic monikers of its refugees and imagined cities, elements of its war, and Obreht’s Serbian heritage suggest that the inspiration for the country, conflict, mass displacement, and implied crimes against humanity was Yugoslavia and the violence that brutalized its peoples throughout the 1990s. Whatever the case, Sil and her mother now exist in the society-adjacent realm where many immigrants find themselves, attempting to integrate into an unfamiliar and not always welcoming land where they’re haunted by reminders of the place and culture they left behind. The occasion of hearing their native language, for example, referred to only as “Ours.”

And it’s this question of “ours” that is largely at the core of the Morningside. Who is included in that distinction? Is the new land where refugees from “Back Home” find themselves truly “ours” from their perspective, as they are systemically and circumstantially relegated to its fringes? And when they do encounter someone they suspect shares their mother tongue, there is always a suspicion pertaining to their past—“Whose side were they on during the war?”—and skepticism as to whether they are one of “ours” or not.

Téa Obreht’s The Morningside Is a Dystopian Fairytale that Explores the Meaning of “Ours”

It is amidst this strained, paranoid atmosphere that Sil encounters Bezi Duras, an enigmatic old woman who lives in her penthouse painting studio atop the Morningside, and whose mysterious nocturnal behavior convinces the young girl that something supernatural is afoot. In the process of surveilling Duras, Sil becomes entangled with a building newcomer Mila—a girl her age from “Back Home” whose family has an obscure past—and a man whose clandestine activities reveal troubling aspects of the island and its history. Wary of all of them is Sil’s mother, who due to a combination of trauma and socioeconomic strife lives in a perpetually hypervigilant condition.

While the Morningside almost certainly alludes to the Yugoslavic wars specifically (it wouldn’t be the first time Obreht has done so—her debut the Tiger’s Wife involved conflicts in an unnamed Balkan nation as well), the concerns of its cast feel highly contemporary and universal. Currently, we here in the real world face the largest refugee crisis since World War Two, and we’re beginning to see undeniable consequences of climate change. In her novel, Obreht describes the anxieties and horrors faced by refugees of her war—situations that will be familiar to anyone aware of the numerous displacement emergencies around the world. Then when Sil and her mother are accepted into a relocation program, they end up waiting endlessly for access to school, work, and other resources. And all of it is happening against a backdrop where the tides are rising and smoke from wildfires increasingly fills the sky…

As dire as its subject matter may be, however, Obreht never allows the book to fall into the easy traps of nihilism or pessimism. Its characters may be managing between apocalypses, but each carries their own variety of hope in the face of slow doom. Their struggle suggests that while this world may be lost, the people who live in it don’t have to be as long as they have art, magic, and one another.

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Téa Obreht’s debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife, won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and was an international bestseller. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, and Zoetrope: All-Story, among many others. Originally from the former Yugoslavia, she now lives in New York with her husband and teaches at Hunter College.

Nick Hilden writes about art and culture for the Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Esquire, the Believer, the Millions, Al Jazeera, and more. You can follow his work and travels on Twitter or Instagram.