Black Mamba Boy
A Novel
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4.3 • 7 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Yemen, 1935. Jama is a "market boy," a half-feral child scavenging with his friends in the dusty streets of a great seaport. For Jama, life is a thrilling carnival, at least when he can fill his belly. When his mother—alternately raging and loving—dies young, she leaves him only an amulet stuffed with one hundred rupees. Jama decides to spend her life's meager savings on a search for his never-seen father; the rumors that travel along clan lines report that he is a driver for the British somewhere in the north. So begins Jama's extraordinary journey of more than a thousand miles north all the way to Egypt, by camel, by truck, by train, but mostly on foot. He slings himself from one perilous city to another, fiercely enjoying life on the road and relying on his vast clan network to shelter him and point the way to his father, who always seems just a day or two out of reach.
In his travels, Jama will witness scenes of great humanity and brutality; he will be caught up in the indifferent, grinding machine of war; he will crisscross the Red Sea in search of working papers and a ship. Bursting with life and a rough joyfulness, Black Mamba Boy is debut novelist Nadifa Mohamed's vibrant, moving celebration of her family's own history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mohamed's beautifully rendered debut, inspired by her father's life, opens in 1935 Aden, Yemen, where 11-year-old Jama and his mother subsist in precarious destitution: Jama spending his days on the streets with other "market boys" while his mother works long hours for little pay at a coffee factory. When his mother dies, Jama briefly returns to his family's home in Hargeisa before running away to search for his long-absent father, who he believes is in Sudan. His quest leads Jama into Italian-controlled Eritrea, where he joins Mussolini's Fascists in exchange for food and shelter, and Mohamed delivers graphic descriptions of the horrifically savage treatment the African askaris received at the hands of the Italians. After the Italians are deposed, Jama settles for a few years into village life, before his wanderings take him to Egypt. Jama is a charming protagonist whose peregrinations assisted by clansmen, kind strangers, and ghostly visitations are directed more by historical and biographical significance than by the demands of plot. Mohamed vividly recreates the complex atmosphere of the era, and her personal investment in the story gives it a passionate edge.
Customer Reviews
Black Mamba Boy
Superb, eloquent and fabulous.
Black Mamba Boy
NM you are cool brother!!!! Great writing style and a good story teller.