This book used to be in our house for years, many years ago.
It was loved by my brothers in their youth, and later on I would read it too as
a young girl, or young woman.
It is a very good story for the young, exciting and
also frightening. Souza's adventures seem very much real and realistic and
quite dangerous too. I could have sworn then that these adventures did happen,
and the boy, and others was NOT a good boy!
Rural life brought to life in
brilliant African fashion, with the author very much part of the society -
hence the gripping reality. But having said that, with the benefit of hindsight
one can say this book, and others like it authored by Africans, are essentially
aimed at African boys, African males in their youth.
I hardly remember such
books aimed at the African girl with such popularity. So African female writers
were rare, which explained why one did not see such books that girls like
myself could identify with? Or maybe one just did not see such books then
written by our female writers, eg Flora Nwapa?
One did read the occasional
Nancy Drew book (for example), but such works of course were never aimed at the African young
woman.
- Lupna Avery
Wish I had read this particular book when I was young. Sounds quite exciting.
ReplyDeleteOgundipe was such a wonderful writer of books for children, perhaps the No 1 in Africa. His imagination knew no bounds, and he wrote thrilling works. No surprise that he worked with children a lot, and was an educationist to the core.
ReplyDeleteA terrifying frightening book in other ways, as the escapades of Souza often go to far in the book. Vicious dogs, pain, bees on the rampage...the book ends in something of pandemonium
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