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Based on the author's own life, this eye-opening story of an African migrant is so simply told and resonant it has the power of parable-for readers of The Lost Children's Archive and The Girl with the Louding Voice.
Ibrahima is still a young boy when his father dies, but as the eldest son, he must leave their home village in the Guinean countryside in search of work to support his family. Eventually, he apprentices to a trucker in a neighboring country, when he learns that his younger brother has dropped out of school and fled to Libya to pursue the dream of finding work in Europe. Leaving everything behind, he sets off with the aim to convince his little brother to return home and complete his education.
His journey, full of hardships and often on foot, takes Ibrahima north to Mali and across the vast desert to the refugee camps of North Africa-to Algeria, Libya, and then back west to Morocco. Stopping along the way to recover or to earn money, he encounters untold cruelties as well as kindness. In Mali, he is held in a prison that serves as a human market. Libya, a place where they make you suffer, is one vast prison for Africans. Sold to a chicken farmer, he escapes for the second time and only then, in a camp in Algeria, does he learn that his brother may have drowned attempting the cross the Mediterranean. Grief-stricken, unable to face his mother and yet unwilling to believe his brother has perished, he too arranges passage across the sea in a Zodiac.
This heartbreaking novel gives voice and a face to the refugee crisis, illuminating the plight of migrants from many lands.
Ibrahima is still a young boy when his father dies, but as the eldest son, he must leave their home village in the Guinean countryside in search of work to support his family. Eventually, he apprentices to a trucker in a neighboring country, when he learns that his younger brother has dropped out of school and fled to Libya to pursue the dream of finding work in Europe. Leaving everything behind, he sets off with the aim to convince his little brother to return home and complete his education.
His journey, full of hardships and often on foot, takes Ibrahima north to Mali and across the vast desert to the refugee camps of North Africa-to Algeria, Libya, and then back west to Morocco. Stopping along the way to recover or to earn money, he encounters untold cruelties as well as kindness. In Mali, he is held in a prison that serves as a human market. Libya, a place where they make you suffer, is one vast prison for Africans. Sold to a chicken farmer, he escapes for the second time and only then, in a camp in Algeria, does he learn that his brother may have drowned attempting the cross the Mediterranean. Grief-stricken, unable to face his mother and yet unwilling to believe his brother has perished, he too arranges passage across the sea in a Zodiac.
This heartbreaking novel gives voice and a face to the refugee crisis, illuminating the plight of migrants from many lands.