This book broke my heart. I literally had to stop reading at certain parts for days in order not to wallow in despair. Written by a former child soldier in Sierra Leone, in an attempt to reproduce the cadences and rhythm of his native tongue Mende, he here tells the story of the village Imperi which was destroyed in a surprise rebel attack and was sequentially abandoned. Slowly, after years of neglect the villagers return, first the elders, who take it upon themselves to clear […]
The Radiance of Tomorrow…aaaannnd Cannonball!
It is the end, or maybe the beginning, of another story. Every story begins and ends with a woman, a mother, a grandmother, a girl, a child. Every story is a birth… To round out my ten African books of the year, I picked up this novel by Ishmael Beah, known for his previous non-fiction, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of A Boy Soldier. After reading this, I definitely want to pick that one up, too. This is fiction, but it’s obviously based on truth. […]
Light at the End of the Tunnel
This is a compelling and disturbing look into the life of one