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Cargando... No Heaven for Good Boys: A Novelpor Keisha Bush
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. I am very surprised at the high ratings for this novel. It is a very sad story about a six-year boy, Ibrahimah, who is sent by his family from a small village in Senegal (Salloulou) to the city of Dakar to become a Talibé (a boy who studies the Quran at a daara) to join his cousin, 12-year old Etienne. Life is very hard for them and the other students, who basically are beggars for their marabout (teacher), Ahmed, who beats them if they do not bring in a daily tithe, and who has several wives, befitting a devoted disciple of Allah. The horrors of their lives in the city is one story, which is told in parallel with the story of his bereaved mother, who misses Ibrahimah terribly, cannot find comfort with her three remaining daughters, eventually lapsing into delirium. Keisha Bush lived in Senegal and must have seen and spoken with these pitiful souls, who live off of the kindness/coins of tourists and the wealthy residents or are the focus of their scorn. Too depressing for me. ( ) Disappointing. I have read quite a bit of African literature lately and have enjoyed most; and the premise of this sounded interesting; however, I was never really pulled into the story. Set in Dakar, Senegal, this is the story of cousins, two boys who have been sent by their families to Dakar to "study" under the authority of a Marabout "a teacher of the Koran". These boys are known as the Talibe and usually come from the poorest families. Ibrahimah and his older cousin Etienne are under the control of a cruel Marabout who forces them to go daily into the streets and beg for money. They encounter all sorts of horrible situations -- the book almost seems to want to paint a picture of this aspect of Senegal by inventing characters who encounter it all. One horrible thing happens after another interspaced with moments of kindness from strangers -- sometimes not always believable. The boys desperately want to return home, but tradition and culture forbid it. I wish I had liked this more. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
"Marabout Ahmed, is a highly regarded Koranic teacher who runs a religious school for young boys in the capital city where Ibrahimah is sent to join his cousin Etienne to study for a year--the local custom for many families. Six-year-old Ibrahimah loves swiping pastries from his mother's kitchen, harvesting green beans with his father, and racing down to the beach after the mosque in search of sea glass with his sisters. But when he is approached in his rural village one day by a seemingly kind stranger, the tides of his life turn forever. Unbeknownst to Ibrahimah's parents, rather than teaching the boys, Marabout sends them out to beg in the streets in order to line his pockets. To make it back home alive, Etienne and Ibrahimah must help one another survive both the dangers posed by Marabout, and the myriad threats of the city: black market organ traders, rival packs of boys from other daaras, and mounting student protest on the streets. Transporting us between rural and urban Senegal, No Heaven for Good Boys shows the strength that can emerge when one has no other choice but to survive. Drawn from real incidents in metropolitan Senegal, No Heaven for Good Boys is provocative, finely rendered, and hauntingly urgent--an extraordinary debut novel that locates the universal through the story of two boys caught in the terrible sweep of history"-- No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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