Black Mamba Boy

Black Mamba Boy is a sumptuous and bittersweet journey book that starts in Aden in 1935 in war-torn Eritrea and Sudan, to Egypt, Palestine and to Britain. Jama, a ten-year-old from the wrong side of the tracks, a slum dweller, who, when tragedy befalls him, decides his only chance to find himself a place to call home is to find his father. The book comprises his journey.

The impressive thing about Nadifa Mohamed’s book is how it successfully interweaves fact and fiction as she retells the journey her own father made from wartorn Sudan to London. The descriptions of the sites and sounds, the journey itself is collated from taped interviews with him. This whiff of authenticity adds to the book, which moves along with as quick a pace as Jama. The book evokes a beautiful, heart-wrenchingly triumphant rites of passage tale, where Jama’s journey and its eventual conclusion is tinged with the sad desperate ‘hunger for a homeland.’

Most interesting is Mohamed’s description of East Africa under the rule of Mussolini and the parallels of his political aggression over the almost-ignorance as to his intentions when all the underclasses wish to do is find food and shelter.

The novel is confident and boundless in its emotion-wrenching.