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Say You're One of Them
Uwem Akpan
Little, Brown and Company
June 2008
On Sale: June 9, 2008
368 pages
ISBN: 0316113786
EAN: 9780316113786
Hardcover
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Fiction
Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of
poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will
feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately. The
eight-year-old narrator of "An Ex-Mas Feast" needs only
enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend
school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the
streets to raise these meager funds, his dream can't be
granted. Food comes first. His family lives in a street
shanty in Nairobi, Kenya, but their way of both loving and
taking advantage of each other strikes a universal chord.
In the second of his stories published in a New Yorker
special fiction issue, Akpan takes us far beyond what we
thought we knew about the tribal conflict in Rwanda. The
story is told by a young girl, who, with her little
brother, witnesses the worst possible scenario between
parents. They are asked to do the previously unimaginable
in order to protect their children. This singular
collection will also take the reader inside Nigeria, Benin,
and Ethiopia, revealing in beautiful prose the harsh
consequences for children of life in Africa.
Akpan's voice is a literary miracle, rendering lives of
almost unimaginable deprivation and terror into stories
that are nothing short of transcendent.
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