Guantanamo Boy
Anna Perera
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
Children's & Teenage |
| Format |
Paperback |
| Pages |
352 |
| RRP |
£6.99 |
| Date of Publication |
February 2009 |
| ISBN |
978-0141326078 |
| Publisher |
Puffin |
| |
Khalid, a fifteen-year-old Muslim boy from Rochdale, is abducted from Pakistan while on holiday with his family. He is taken to Guantanamo Bay and held without charge, where his hopes and dreams are crushed under the cruellest of circumstances. An innocent denied his freedom at a time when Western boys are finding theirs, Khalid tries and fails to understand what's happening to him and cannot fail to be a changed young man.
Recommended for ages 12+.
Reviews
The Times
Amanda Craig
"[An] excellent novel... Perera learnt of the plight of children at Guantánamo Bay through the human rights charity Reprieve, but her novel wears its research lightly, creating a hero, Khalid, who is believable and sympathetic... In portraying all Muslim captives as innocent and peace-loving, Perera is overdoing her case. But in showing the idiocy of torture, which makes prisoners confess to any crime, she is superb."
06/02/2009
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The Sunday Times
Nicolette Jones
"The brutality of Khalid's treatment and the Kafkaesque drama of his inability to make anyone accept the truth are painful to live through. Readers will be wrung out afterwards, but will appreciate the small comforts and kindnesses of normal life that Khalid vividly remembers in the midst of the horror. This powerful and humane book shows that hatred is never an answer, and proves the pointlessness of torture and the danger of thinking of anyone as 'other'."
08/02/2009
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The Financial Times
James Lovegrove
"Perera is...careful to depict [Khalid] as an ordinary boy, interested in girls and football, not some paragon, a devout martyr who represents all Islam. Similarly, the Americans in her book aren’t all bad, and Pakistanis are shown as complicit in the identification and capture of terror suspects in their country. The argument is as well balanced as the moral outrage is palpable. The problem with a novel so topical, however, is that the news moves on."
28/03/2009
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The Guardian
SF Said
"Despite the ultimate focus on Guantánamo, its biggest achievement may simply be to represent ordinary Muslim lives that are seldom written about, precisely because of their ordinariness... The details feel less convincing once he's out of the UK... If it does not achieve everything that it might as fiction, it stands as an important work that deserves a wide audience - not only among teenagers, but anyone who cares about the big issues of our time."
28/03/2009
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