![]() Read it and you’ll remember it for many years to come. At times My Luck's ‘visionary interludes’ can make things slightly confusing at times, but putting this aside Abani presents a truly praiseworthy piece of literature. There are threads of hope running through the story which keep the reader on the right side of abject despair, but overall a grim story which reveals the abhorrent consequences of war. ![]() Definitely not recommended for the faint of heat, Song for Night offers a vivid a powerful impression of what it may be like to wander a veritable ‘Hell on Earth’, in an African civil war that’s left little for salvation. Thinking that he was dead, the rest of his platoon left him lying in a field to die. A young man searches for his platoon across a war-torn area of Nigeria The story begins with the child soldier My Luck waking from a mine blast that has killed one of his best friends in his platoon. Pausing at times to reminisce on his time as a boy soldier, My Luck reveals the abominable acts he's been involved in, and the sights which have scarred his soul forever. Detailed plot synopsis reviews of Song For Night. My Luck has also been ’adapted’ for mine clearance, having his voice cords severed so he is unable to scream should he be blown up and severely wounded.Narrated in the first-person by My Luck himself, Song for Night follows the boy soldier as he navigates his way across a war-torn landscape full of danger and horror. The platoon is a special one, one whose job is focused on reconnaissance and mine clearance, and My Luck’s particular role is in the diffusing of mines, a job for which his small stature is particularly suited. Song for Night follows the journey of Nigerian boy soldier My Luck as he endeavours to re-attach himself to his platoon, following the unexpected detonation of a mine. “Impressive and fast-paced…narrated with such dry and lucid precision that it brings to mind Babel, Hemingway, McCarthy.”- Esquire That Chris Abani is able to find humanity, mercy, and even, yes, forgiveness, amid such devastation is something of a miracle.”-Rebecca Brown, author of The End of Youth “Not since Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird or Agota Kristof’s Notebook Trilogy has there been such a harrowing novel about what it’s like to be a young person in a war. This “immersive and dreamlike” novella ( Publishers Weekly, starred review) by a PEN/Hemingway Award winner is unlike anything else written about an African war. The mute protagonist-his vocal cords cut to lower the risk of detection by the enemy-writes in a ghostly voice about his fellow minesweepers, the things he’s witnessed, and the things he’s done, each chapter headed by a line of the sign language these children invented. Part Inferno, part Paradise Lost, part Sunjata epic, Song for Night is the story of a West African boy soldier’s terrifying yet oddly beautiful journey through a nightmare landscape of brutal war in search of his lost platoon. The men werent specifically connected to the. ![]() “A devastating portrait of a boy holding onto the shreds of his innocence during a war that deliberately, remorselessly works to yank it away.”- Los Angeles Times In the book Night, three men are hung in light of another man who attacked the electrical plant in Buna.
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