Allah Is Not Obliged

Description

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. 'The full, final and completely complete title of my bullshit story is- Allah is not obliged to be fair about all things he does here on earth' Birahima's story is one of horror and laughter. After his mother's death he travels to Liberia to find his aunt but on the way gets caught up in rebel fighting and ends up with a Kalashnikov in his hands. He tells of the chaotic and terrible adventures that follow in his career as a small soldier with heartbreaking bravado and wisdom.

Ahmadou Kourouma was born in the Ivory Coast in 1927. Hailed as one of the leading African writers in French, he died in 2003.

A work of luminous humanity -- Michael Thompson-Noel * Financial Times * 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 -- Aminatta Forna * Guardian * An exceptional storyteller * Independent * Allah is Not Obliged... deftly captures the mixture of horror, fascination and detachment with which a child views the world of grown-up folly * The Economist * 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, and brings the grandeur of gestures such as the G8 pledges into uncomfortably sharp relief -- Sarak Birke * New Statesman *