Name: The glass collector
ISBN: 9780807529485

Anna Perera

A fifteen-year-old boy lives amongst the rubbish piles in the slums of Cairo and collects broken glass while hoping to find a future he can believe in.

The glass collector

Sarah Sammis

The Glass Collector by Anna Perera follows Aaron, a Zabbaleen (Coptic Christian) teen. The Zabbaleens are the garbage collectors of Egypt. They collect it in horse drawn carriages and recycle it and feed the food scraps to their live stock (pigs).

The book opens with Aaron believing he sees the Virgin Mary in in the glass of one of the tourist hotels. That strong opening with a hint of magical realism set up expectations for the direction this novel was going to take. But after that initial sighting, the book settles into a far more mundane routine of collecting garbage, talking about family (the good and bad of it) and thinking about girls.

Aaron begins to steel perfume instead of collecting the empty bottles. Of course his thievery (while completely understandable given his situation) has consequences.

While the descriptions working with garbage and living in extreme poverty are well done, the tone of the book remains flat. There's no ebb and flow to the emotional impact. Aaron does his thing but he never truly comes alive.

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