Allah Is Not Obliged by Ahmadou Kourouma | Book Review

There's a repulsive quality to Ahmadou Kourouma's Allah Is Not Obliged that's immediately apparent when you begin this novel especially because of the narrator's choice of words. Birahima is a foul-mouthed child soldier who's somewhere between the ages of ten and twelve. He was born in Togobola, a village in Beyla, Guinea, a country on the western coast of Africa. After the death of his mother, his grandma makes arrangements for him to travel to Liberia to live with his aunt because she wants him to avoid the kind of life he's destined to live if he remains in their village. She wakes him up early one morning, puts all her life savings in the palm of his hand, and then tearfully sends him off on a journey to Liberia with Yacouba, a shady money-multiplier/fortune teller/maker of charms and amulets. Their trip is cut short by a marauding troop of rebels who absorb both Yacouba and Birahima into their ranks because Birahima cries and begs repeatedly to be made a child soldier. Allah Is Not Obliged is a memoir of the events that occurred during Birahima's time as a child soldier and he narrates it with an indifference that is surprising for someone his age.

I considered putting this book down so many times right after I started it. It took so long to plough through to page twenty-five because I wasn't captivated by any of it. There's an annoyingly large amount of political talk scattered throughout the book that is completely unnecessary. Some of it was needed to understand the ongoing wars but a lot of it should have been cut out of the book. This is not another child soldier story with an endearing protagonist. Birahima doesn't exhibit the kind of childish innocence that pulls you in and makes you wonder if he can ever be rehabilitated like I wondered when I reviewed Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Birahima's not like Biyi Bandele's protagonist, Banana in Burma Boy or Agu in Uzodinma Iweala's Beasts of No Nation and that's fine with me. Birahima himself warns us on page four "Number six... Don't go thinking that I'm some cute kid, 'cos I'm not. I'm cursed because I did bad things to my maman [mother]." In the end, there isn't the overwhelming sympathy you might have come to expect from novels like this, just a numbness and an appreciation of a good story.

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Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah | Book Review

Years after the end of the war, the people of Imperi trickle back home using the many winding, snake-like paths leading to their village. The first arrivals return to find a deserted village strewn with lots of human bones. It's the bones of those who couldn't escape quickly enough on the afternoon that the faraway war finally came to Imperi. Among the arrivals are the elderly, the young, amputees, the people who amputated the amputees, and victims of rape carrying babies. They all hope to reunite with their loved ones and as they come into town they search for familiar faces. The war has left everyone feeling vulnerable and distrustful and they're cautious about getting attached to the new normal because they fear things could change at any time. So as they work hard to rebuild their lives they keep an eye out for plundering enemies from the outside, completely blind to the monsters amongst them who would turn against them in exchange for the most basic of comforts. Change comes to Imperi but it's not the kind they anticipated or the sort of change they desire.

I approached this novel warily when I found out it was another war story because I was worried it might be a rehash of sorts. However, I picked it up because Ishmael Beah's firsthand account of war in his debut novel A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier was incredibly moving and very memorable. In Radiance of Tomorrow, the combination of the plotline and the narrative angle left me deeply dissatisfied. If A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is a ten on a scale of one to ten then Radiance of Tomorrow is a three. Radiance of Tomorrow is a fairly interesting novel but very, very, very putdownable.

READ: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah - My Thoughts

[Image via Amazon]

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah | Book Review

In A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah writes about his years as a boy soldier in Sierra Leone. It's an incredible tale of children trudging through war torn Sierra Leone, armed to the teeth with assorted rifles, raiding villages, killing, and committing abominable atrocities. These kids have been torn away from everything they hold dear either because of the actions of rebel fighters or the actions of soldiers who should be protecting them. They are picked up along the way and trained to maim, loot, and kill. It's crazy. Even as Ishmael describes the horrors of war seen through the eyes of a child you begin to wonder if any child is wholly redeemable from a life this gory. How do you "fix" such children? How can you bring them back to a state of normalcy in all aspects of life? Ishmael Beah is a success story. His story is that of the lucky ones who survive, "successfully rehabilitate", find a passion, and are able to smile as happily, and uninhibitedly as Ishmael does for the photo on the back cover of this novel. For every Ishmael Beah there are countless more who undoubtedly had no choice but to rejoin the fighters and continue with the madness in Sierra Leone.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is a standout tale. All the praise for this book is very well deserved. It's a memoir that should be on every shelf. It brings to mind Biyi Bandele's Burma Boy and Uzodinma Iweala's Beasts of No Nation (only because I read those two books first before reading Ishmael's) but as much, much lesser comparisons. All three books deal with protagonists who are child soldiers but neither Bandele nor Iweala were able to hit as hard as Ishmael did. Most likely because Ishmael Beah lived this life. This is his tale to tell and he does so magnificently. There's a lot of things A Long Way Gone does to you, one of which is remind you that there's a lot we all take for granted. No matter what our life story is there's a lot we should still be thankful for. This is an important story. Buy it. Read it. Share it.
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READ:
Burma Boy by Biyi Bandele - My Thoughts
Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala - My Thoughts

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Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala | Book Review

After reading the first two sentences in this book my immediate thoughts were: ‘This is not pidgin english…' The buzz I picked up about this book was that it was written in pidgin English. If you heard the same and are expecting to see “Wetin?” and “na u sabi” kind of pidgin in here you will be disappointed. It’s not Nigerian pidgin Iweala's protagonist narrates in, it’s broken English, the sort that is not peculiar to Nigeria or any other West African country.

"Beasts of No Nation" is Iweala’s intrepid debut novel. The protagonist Agu is a child who is torn from his family by war, found by rebels and forcibly conscripted. As he goes through the daily horrors of living with the rebels and fighting the war, he flashes back to the happier times in his life before the madness of war comes and shatters the lives of his family and community. The women and girls are shipped away from his community for protection while the men and boys remain to defend the town in one last act of bravado. Now Agu is at the mercy of the rebels who have found him and he’s answerable to their commander who has other uses for the young boys under his domination. Exposure to the language, savage behavior, sexual acts and violent murders of the rebels changes him and he matures quickly. He may be tough enough to kill people by butchering them with a shiny matchete but inside he’s still barely out of childhood. The scenes of war will haunt him even in his place of refuge where he’s being rehabilitated.

This book is not the “unputdownable” sort but it is quite interesting. Iweala comes through nicely at the end. There are a few flaws I have to point out. Often times in his use of pidgin, the protagonist Agu uses words or sentence constructions that someone of his age and educational level wouldn’t be able to execute. Agu doesn't use them in that flashy, misplaced way uneducated people use big grammar and so those moments seem out of place, like Uzodinma Iweala couldn't find the right way to convey whatever needed to be expressed in broken english. Sometimes too Agu’s narration, especially the war bits, lack realism. There’s no doubt in my mind that the pidgin lends a flavor to the story telling and it's great that Iweala tells it in this fresh and impressive manner. This book make plenty sense o! Make una try read am, the boy try well, well, well.

“Uzodinma Iweala was born in 1982. He graduated from Harvard University, where he was a Mellon Mays Scholar and received a number of prizes for his writing, including the Eager Prize, the Horman Prize, the Le Baron Prize , and the Hoopes Prize, awarded for outstanding undergraduate thesis. He lives in Washington, D.C., and Lagos, Nigeria” – Biography from book jacket by HarperCollins Publishers

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Half Of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie - My Thoughts

Half of a Yellow Sun easily outshines the profusion of books published in the year 2006. Despite of the gravity of issues Chimamanda deals with here, she soothes the readers’ soul with her witty writing.

Half of a Yellow Sun hits you hard with terrific imagery describing suffering, the magnanimity of a million losses, tears and immeasurable pain; then drains you, leaving you wondering if you could have survived that period, and how your parents and grandparents did. It will have you futilely hoping such horrors never cross anyone’s path.

It's beautiful, soul stirring and poignant. Adichie leaves her characters emotions fully explored.

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I visited Chimamanda Adichie & Chinua Achebe's old house on the University of Nigeria, Nsukka campus! Read my post HERE!