A review by bcamards
Black Mamba Boy by Nadifa Mohamed

5.0

I loved this historical novel (based on the author's father's adolescence) featuring a Somali boy's decade-long journey across the Horn of Africa around WWII - searching for his father, making friends, coming of age, and finding meaning along the way. The boy is traversing the Horn of Africa while British and Italians are fighting each other for control of the region and the reverberations of WWII were being felt. This book was so well-researched and did such a wonderful job of dropping you into a place and point in time, describing in vibrant detail the cities we passed through, in Yemen, Somaliland, Djibouti, Eritrea, Egypt, Palestine, and more. The beginning was slow for me but the book was ultimately so engaging. 4.5/5