Allah Is Not Obliged

Description

Birahima is ten years old. He lives in the Ivory Coast. He is a soldier. In Ahmadou Kourouma's extraordinary novel, Birahima tells his story. At the age of ten his mother dies, and Birahima leaves his native village, accompanied by the sorcerer/crook Yacouba, to search for his aunt Mahan. Crossing the border into Liberia, they are seized by a rebel force and press-ganged into military service. Birahima is given a Kalashnikov, minimal rations of food, a small supply of dope and a tiny wage. Fighting in a totally chaotic civil war, and alongside many other boys, some no older than he, Birahima sees death, torture, amputation and madness, but somehow manages to retain his own sanity...Ahmadou Kourouma's masterpiece is powerful, terrible and frequently bitterly and blackly funny.

Promotion info

An extraordinarily powerful and affecting novel of Africa's child-soldiers, by French Africa's pre-eminent novelist. In the tradition of City of God 20040315

Reviews

"It is a powerful, shocking and deeply moving novel; an African Lord of the Flies. Through Kourouma's skilful telling, the characters live on the page."
-"Guardian"
"Melding fiction and fact with the humility of childhood, Ahmadou Kourouma deftly exposes the desperate nature of the civil wars -- and the relentless poverty -- that have ravaged Africa...."
-"New Statesman"

Author description

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