•
Rating: A child searches for his father. An unfortunate child loses his mother when he needs her the most. A twisted story, some might say. An African story, 1930s, 1940s. Egypt, Horn of Africa, even Yemen.
The Mamba Boy has a couple of friends, but it doesn't end well. He has a dream, to find his father, who went to Sudan to seek his fortune. Jama, the Mamba Boy, essentially grows up. A coming-of-age novel, overall well-written. Certainly not a milestone, but Nadifa Mohamed was born in 1981 and this is her first book, she has time.
Read this book, we need to begin to understand Africa, rather than just talk about it. And novels like "Half of a Yellow Sun" and Mamba Boy (Neri Pozza Editore, 2010) can help us. It's not a world so distant from ours, if we remember who controlled the Horn of Africa in the 1930s/'40s. And certainly, the Italians don’t look good here, it's about their defeat at the hands of the English, their naivety if you will, our naivety. Naivety that was paid for by us and by innocent Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans.
A coming-of-age novel, as was said, undoubtedly so (there is the inner growth, as well as the physical growth, of Jama) and even picaresque. Picaresque novel because the journey is at the heart of the story, Mamba Boy travels far and wide, with makeshift means or no means at all, facing the worst difficulties, between characters who are depraved and others who remain whole and positive despite everything. A coming-of-age novel, to shape us.
Now depart, and if your path takes you
Into suffocating woods thick with Agar trees
Places immersed in the sultriness, arid and dry,
Where you struggle to breathe, and the breeze won't come
May God raise a shield of cool air
Between your body and the assault of the sun.
"Gabay" by Moxamed Cabdula Xasan
Oh army of little vagabonds of the world,
Leave your footprints in my words.
From "Stray Birds" by Rabindranath Tagore
Loading comments slowly
