Why a Booktrail?
2000s: This thought-provoking coming of age story touches on many of Africa’s biggest problems today.
The Day of the Orphan
What you need to know before your trail
Like many eighteen-year-old boys, Saga’s prime concerns are: listening to music, learning about girls, and making sure his considerable tummy is well-fed. In his affluent, liberal and relatively protected suburb life is pretty good.
However, in Africa, childhoods can be snatched in an instant, especially when you live in a dictatorship. When his friends and family are dragged into the conflict, he is given no choice. Chubby Saga becomes an unlikely revolutionary, but these are very dangerous times. Their violent President Brewman has built their country on fear and even he, himself, is terrified. Spies, traps and double-dealings lie everywhere. Can one happy-go-lucky schoolboy really stand up to a murderous regime? How long can he stay one step ahead of the Zombie soldiers that will do anything to stop him?
Travel Guide
Africa
Africa
The setting is fictional in name but real in nature and in the experiences of the characters.
Saga goes to a Brewman Boys Hhigh School:
Unlike most of the other struggling and quasi-dilapidated secondary schools in th e country, Brewman Boys High School was a modern, purpose-built affair that boasted of plush, green acreages and pristine, red-brick classroom blocks…”
Cape Cover is the capital city of this unnamed country. Their part of the city is awash with trees and flowers and realises that his part of the city is very stark contrast to the rest of it.
This story brings to light the plights of those living in Africa. The military might be called Zombie soliders instead of puppet ones and the president is familiar with so many of that continent – The “President-for-Life-Until-Further-Notice” the musical references are all Western and very modern.
This is a modern and international story:
“To internationalise our struggle is to attract more sympathisers to our cause, while attracting more outside opposition to this brute of a president who has usurped power!”
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Day of the Orphan
Destination : Africa Author/Guide: Dr Nat Tanoh Departure Time:2000s
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