Name: Black Mamba Boy
ISBN: 9780007315765

Nadifa Mohamed

Named as one of the GRANTA BEST OF YOUNG BRITISH NOVELISTS 2013. For fans of Half of a Yellow Sun, a stunning novel set in 1930s Somalia spanning a decade of war and upheaval, all seen through the eyes of a small boy alone in the world.

Black Mamba Boy

Jama is a half-feral child scavenging in the streets of a great seaport. After his mother dies, Jama decides to search for his never-seen father. So begins Jama's extraordinary journey of more than a thousand miles north all the way to Egypt.

Brendan M

While the prose is sometimes a bit clunky, overall this is a good story, well told. The fact it is based on the author's father, with admitted embellishments, enhances the story for me. It feels like a tale an old man would tell his grandchildren about his life, broadly true but with colourful turns of phrase and exaggeration for effect. 

At times Mohamed's writing suffers from a poor turn of phrase or inelegant juxtaposition, as when she introduces Mussolini during a passage on the protagonist's travails in Eritrea. Despite these stylistic faults, Black Mamba Boy is a poetic and enthralling account of a young man growing up amid the global turmoil of war and poverty afflicting Africa in the middle of the twentieth century.

Barbara Williford

A coming of age book for young Jama. Jama is a roughen living on the streets of Africa trying to survive. His father has abandoned him, he has same from his family and the community. The only thing he has is his mother until she dies. At the age of 11, he starts his trek to Egypt to find his father. With the help of clansmen and benevolent people, he spends years on the road making his way and discovering the man he will become. During WWII and the invasion of the Italians and Germans, he is forced into fighting a white man’s war and experiences many horrors.

Trigger warnings: strong language, graphic content including wartime atrocities, abuse, violence and racism.

Jessica Smith

Black Mamba Boy follows a boy named Jama as he struggles through crushing poverty and war in a number of locations: Yemen, Somalia, Eritrea, Egypt, Palestine and England. It's almost more of a travelogue than a novel; we follow Jama as he goes to different places and sees and does different things, but there's no real rising tension or climactic conclusion. Still, depending on your tastes that may well be no deterrent to you.

Black Mamba Boy

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