Scan barcode
A review by iced_mochas
Black Mamba Boy by Nadifa Mohamed
4.0
Black Mamba Boy (350-word review with comment from writer):
“One by one, the planets Jama’s life orbited around had spun away and left him in a universe where he was just debris floating in a starless obscurity.”
Jama’s treacherous journey as a child is heart-wrenchingly painful, set off only by light moments of relief and small morsels of hope. Nadifa Mohamed serenades the reader through beautifully vivid metaphors, colourful dialogue and scenes of nauseating unmasked brutality (she doesn’t hold back) to retrace her own father’s footsteps.
As a principled and determined street child, Jama flees poverty and war to reach some kind of notion of a family. His masculinity is gently shaped by inner turmoil and emotional vulnerability — characteristics which we recognise in the courageous Shidane and the sweet fatherly Idea. Strokes of luck and tribal nuances facilitate Jama’s continued survival — but, oh boy, it’s remarkable that he makes it.
Most pertinently, and perhaps inadvertently, Black Mamba Boy triumphs as a history lesson. Set from 1935 to 1947, the novel takes us through the streets of a hunger-ridden, but charmingly cosmopolitan Aden in Yemen; it carries us in lorries and buses to Somaliland and Djibouti; it allows us to witness both the idyllic prosperity and the fierce barrenness of isolated villages in Eritrea; it enables us to cross deserts into Sudan, Egypt and Palestine; and sets us sailing in a prison ship full of Jewish refugees to Europe.
Above all, we are introduced to the merciless dehumanisation of African bodies in the Second World War, as the author paints a picture of the ugly, gluttonous face of Italian fascism and senseless British imperialism that pervade Jama’s teens.
I wondered if Nadifa Mohamed had visited the places that her father struggled through. She told me: “Yes, I went to Eritrea, Somaliland and Djibouti, but not Yemen or Egypt. Going to East Africa brought the texture and sensual details of the book to life.”
To better understand where we are, and, quite frankly, to learn about African countries that rarely enter our popular consciousness, Black Mamba Boy is an essential read. Brace yourselves.
https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780007315772/black-mamba-boy
“One by one, the planets Jama’s life orbited around had spun away and left him in a universe where he was just debris floating in a starless obscurity.”
Jama’s treacherous journey as a child is heart-wrenchingly painful, set off only by light moments of relief and small morsels of hope. Nadifa Mohamed serenades the reader through beautifully vivid metaphors, colourful dialogue and scenes of nauseating unmasked brutality (she doesn’t hold back) to retrace her own father’s footsteps.
As a principled and determined street child, Jama flees poverty and war to reach some kind of notion of a family. His masculinity is gently shaped by inner turmoil and emotional vulnerability — characteristics which we recognise in the courageous Shidane and the sweet fatherly Idea. Strokes of luck and tribal nuances facilitate Jama’s continued survival — but, oh boy, it’s remarkable that he makes it.
Most pertinently, and perhaps inadvertently, Black Mamba Boy triumphs as a history lesson. Set from 1935 to 1947, the novel takes us through the streets of a hunger-ridden, but charmingly cosmopolitan Aden in Yemen; it carries us in lorries and buses to Somaliland and Djibouti; it allows us to witness both the idyllic prosperity and the fierce barrenness of isolated villages in Eritrea; it enables us to cross deserts into Sudan, Egypt and Palestine; and sets us sailing in a prison ship full of Jewish refugees to Europe.
Above all, we are introduced to the merciless dehumanisation of African bodies in the Second World War, as the author paints a picture of the ugly, gluttonous face of Italian fascism and senseless British imperialism that pervade Jama’s teens.
I wondered if Nadifa Mohamed had visited the places that her father struggled through. She told me: “Yes, I went to Eritrea, Somaliland and Djibouti, but not Yemen or Egypt. Going to East Africa brought the texture and sensual details of the book to life.”
To better understand where we are, and, quite frankly, to learn about African countries that rarely enter our popular consciousness, Black Mamba Boy is an essential read. Brace yourselves.
https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780007315772/black-mamba-boy