I don't really know how to describe this novella. It was haunting, and yet I had to finish it. It is beautifully written, but if you have an aversion to death and graphic writing you will not like it. There is so much to digest in this book. It would be one you would want to read with a friend so you could discuss. it.
Quote:
rained as a human mine detector, an Igbo boy soldier in West Africa witnesses and takes part in unspeakable brutality. His clipped, dispassionate narrative tells of mutilation, rape, massacre. But tells is the wrong word. He has not spoken for three years since, at 12, his vocal cords were deliberately cut so that he would not scream and give away his platoon's presence if he was blown up. After an explosion, he travels back in search of his comrades through abandoned villages and rotting corpsesand through his own memories. As he did in Becoming Abigail (2006), Abani, who was himself jailed and tortured in Nigeria, never backs away from a gruesome detail, but the gore is never sensationalized. The horror of what happens to this Igbo boy is intensified by his confusion and his tenderness. He remembers his mother taught him to crochet; she died hiding him. Ijeoma, the girl he loved, comforted him after he was forced to rape a captive. Then Ijeoma stepped on a mine. His words, "I miss her," say it all. Rochman, Hazel







