Black Mamba Boy: A Novel

A beautiful, elegantly written poigant story, which underlines 'white man's' stupidity in not recognising all people on Earth are equal irrespective of their color, creed or religious belief. Mocked, beaten and degraded by men revelling in their power, Jama always walked forward into the unknown searching for his father until he was afforded a 'vital piece of paper' that determined where he could or could not go! Thank you Nadifa for a truly outstanding book and which fully deserves to receive accolades by the score. I cannot wait for your next 'story' as I'm sure it will be as rivetting as Black Mamba Boy!

Jama and his mother left Somaliland after Jama's father deserted them, and they are now living as dependents with unfriendly relatives in Yemen. To stay out of everyone's hair, including his mercurial mother's, Jama spends his days roaming the markets with other semi-feral children. After his mother's death, Jama decides to search for the father he has never known. At the age of eleven, he travels first to his homeland, then on to Sudan through Italian-held Abyssinia. After a stint as an askaris (local soldier serving in a colonial army), Jama wanders further north searching for a better future in the British merchant marines.Jama's 1000-mile journey is based on the the life of the author's father. The book opens in 1935 and ends in 1947, covering a very tumultuous period in African history. The Italians and the British are vying for territory and as World War II begins, Jama is caught up in causes he doesn't understand, including, at the end of the novel, the drama of the Jewish refugees on the Exodus. As with all fictional biographies, I wonder where the line is between fact and fiction, but if even the bones of the story are true, it's an incredible one. For a debut novel, it is very well done, and it was long-listed for the Orange Prize.

Read this book as a book club selection. Stumbled over the middle eastern names a bit until the dynamics began to flow. Actually, my ignorance, I'm sure. Historical accounts most interesting. Cultural insights excellent. After completing this novel, I read more about the author and learned that it's a semi-biographical story about her father. Had I realized that before reading, I think the story would have had an even greater effect on me. I recommend it.

I enjoyed the story although (at times) it was rather similar to others of this ilk. The story itself was well presented but there were areas when it became confusing and the ending was rather disappointing.

As you're looking at this book, you may be as interested in African writers as I am. I highly recommend that you investigate as many as possible because I have yet to read one that isn't brilliant. The beauty of the writing, the complexity of this story by Nadifa Mohammed is a must read in understanding the culture of Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, etc. beginning in the 1930's. I also highly recommend the other book I have read by her, The Orchard of Lost Souls.

Well written

Nadifa Mohamed retells a fascinating tale of forgotten history in a literary style evocative of Gabriel Marquez's magical realism accounts of his forebears. In this case, the main character, Jama, is drawn from the true life adventures of Mohammed's father who overcame the worst of poverty, brutality and war in a epic journey through Somalia and Ethiopia in the 1930s. Jama is sustained throughout by a strong sense of destiny, the guiding presence of his late mother and the kindly help of strangers. The language and settings reflect in equal measure half-remembered family legends, reshaped through repeated tellings and the harsh realities of life for a small, vulnerable boy fending for himself. Perhaps a little overlong in the end, "Black Mamba Boy" opens important windows on the past.

Very good, heart wrenching read.

I’ve just finished rereading this for the third time. The first chapter sets the scene with Mohamed describing her aging father through her own eyes and how she will tell the story of his life. The writing is eloquent and very descriptive-I could picture the characters and scenes. It gives us not only the story of her father’s life but also the Somalian customs/cultures and the history of Africa before/during and after the Second World War. Jama is an endearing multi layered person, inquisitive, impulsive, strong and determined with huge compassion and a stubborn strength of survival. Although his mother is only briefly in the book, it is her relentless love and compassion that’s drives his spirit, giving him a sense of survival and enabling him on his vast journey across Africa and to England.

great book. beautiful story with poignant moments. will definitely read her other books.

Ich fand den Einstieg in diese Geschichte eher schwierig, vor allem, da mir ein Glossar gefehlt hat, da ich mit den Begriffen nicht vertraut war. Ausserdem konnte ich, sobald ich mich dann gut zurecht gefunden hatte, nicht zu viel auf einmal lesen, es war einfach zu deprimierend, wenn auch sehr spannend, denn dieser Teil der Geschichte geht in unseren Breitengraden doch sehr unter/hat keine Priorität. Es war auch interessant, das mal aus anderer Perspektive zu sehen. Die Gründe fürs Auswandern haben sich nicht geändert, der Umgang der Menschen miteinander leider ebenso wenig, was traurig und wütend macht. Letztendlich war das Buch nicht ganz befriedigend, da zu viele Dinge unerklärt blieben und das Ende sehr offen war. Dennoch gab es einen spannenden Einblick.

Am Anfang wortgewaltig und bunt, entwickeln sich die Geschichte und ihre Charaktere zu einem löchrigen Patchwork-Gewebe, dessen Löcher von Episode zu Episode mehr ins Auge fallen.Ein "Entwicklungsroman", in dem die Entwicklung des Protagonisten willkürliche Sprünge macht - das entwertet für mich auch die Passagen, die durchaus gut erzählt sind.

You can almost smell this powerful first novel. There is the stink of rotting goat meat, the sour odour of sweat and dust and the hot smoke in the boiler room of a British Navy steamship, as we follow Somaliland-born Jama, the main character, on an extraordinary journey from the backstreets of 1930s Yemen, through '30s and '40s Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, to the '50s docksides of peasouper Britain.If you wrung out the pages there'd be a mess of blood and sand - the young Jama is educated in the school of exceptionally hard knocks, loosing first his mother, then his father, and then - worse - conscripted into Mussolini's army, East Africa branch.So, it's a visceral read and UK-Somalilander author Nadifa Mohamed's writing is so raw that, at times, I had to put the book aside and take a deep breath. It turns my stomach even to recall a scene in which one of Jama's friends is brutally sodomised and then slaughtered by a couple of power-crazed Italian soldiers in Ethiopia. For that one she wins the Reservoir Dogs Grand Prize for the Graphic Portrayal of Senseless Violence.I won't say it's all doom and gloom - Black Mamba Boy is not quite a misery memoir. In fact Jama is a very hardy and resourceful young man, who takes his pleasures where he finds them - how could he survive otherwise? Neither is he on a western traveller's journey of self-exploration. Instead he lives like a Somali nomad writ large, riding the waves of history and circumstance on the surfboard of his wits until he finds a place of relative rest - a damp and foggy postwar England plastered with signs declaiming `No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs'.Nadifa Mohamed may the the first writer to try to infuse a novel written in English with the flavour of the Somali language. `Spare', `lean', `efficient' - these are not words to describe her prose but in my view her cross-cultural literary experiment is an interesting one which will bear more fruit as her style develops.This one's a 4/5, then, on the basis that I'm looking forward to reading Novel No 2 which I understand is in production, and set in 1980s Hargeisa. I'll save my fifth star for that.