Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan (2009, Paperback)

Synopsis
After reading this painfully affective collection of profound short stories, written from the point of view of children from five different countries in Africa, every complaint we might make about our lives seems insignificant. In his stunning literary debut, Uwem Akpan, a Jesuit priest who was born and raised in Nigeria, evokes the casual atrocities of life in modern Africa, horrors whose edges are honed by the dull resignation with which the characters accept them. In one story, an eight-year-old boy in Kenya tries to rectify the guilt he feels from knowing that his 12-year-old sister is selling her body to support her family and his education. Another tale adds a morbid twist to a fairy tale theme, as a brother and sister in Gabon realize that their uncle is attempting to fatten them up to be sold into slavery. The most wrenching story depicts the crimson chaos of the Rwandan genocide, as seen through the eyes of the young daughter of a Hutu-Tutsi marriage. Akpan writes with riveting wisdom and emotional density, prudently ignoring the temptation for authorial flourish as he presents each horrific scene in the lucid prose of a child.

Key Details
Author:	Uwem Akpan
Publisher:	Back Bay Books
Format:	Paperback
ISBN-10:	0316086371
ISBN-13:	9780316086370

Size
Length:	360 pages

Industry Reviews
"Juxtaposed against the clarity and revelation in Akpan's prose--as translucent a style as I've read in a long while--we find subjects that nearly render the mind helpless and throw the heart into a hopeless erratic rhythm out of fear, out of pity, out of the shame of being only a few degrees of separation removed from these monstrous modern circumstances."
(05/31/2008)

"Akpan's prose is beautiful and his stories are insightful and revealing, made even more harrowing because all the horror--and there is much--is seen through the eyes of children." (starred review)
(04/14/2008)

"[A] stunning achievement. This book is brave, it's terrifying, and it has the disconcerting effect of making a lot of other contemporary fiction seem so much inconsequential drivel."
(04/11/2009)

"This is heartfelt reportage, written with a poet's eye for telling details....an extremely impressive collection..."
(09/01/2008)

"[A] startling debut collection....[Akpan] fuses a knowledge of African poverty and strife with a conspicuously literary approach to storytelling, filtering tales of horror through the wide eyes of the young. In each of the tales in SAY YOU'RE ONE OF THEM a protagonist's childlike innocence is ultimately savaged by the facts of African life."
(06/27/2008)