An Oprah's Book Club selection: this "electrifying" book (Washington
Post) pays tribute to the wisdom and resilience of children even in the
face of the most agonizing circumstances.
Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and
violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they've ever
encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of "An
Ex-Mas Feast" needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order
to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the
streets to raise these meager funds, his dream can't be granted. Food
comes first. His family lives in a street shanty in Nairobi, Kenya, but
their way of both loving and taking advantage of each other strikes a
universal chord.
In the second of his stories published in a New Yorker special fiction
issue, Akpan takes us far beyond what we thought we knew about the
tribal conflict in Rwanda. The story is told by a young girl, who, with
her little brother, witnesses the worst possible scenario between
parents. They are asked to do the previously unimaginable in order to
protect their children. This singular collection will also take the
reader inside Nigeria, Benin, and Ethiopia, revealing in beautiful prose
the harsh consequences for children of life in Africa.
Akpan's voice is a literary miracle, rendering lives of almost
unimaginable deprivation and terror into stories that are nothing short
of transcendent.
One of the best books of the year: Wall Street Journal, People,
Bloomberg News, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post Book World,
and Entertainment Weekly
