Little Family

A Novel

De: Ishmael Beah

Narrado por: Dion Graham

From the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of A Long Way Gone.

A powerful novel about young people living at the margins of society, struggling to replace the homes they have lost with the one they have created together.

Hidden away from a harsh outside world, five young people have improvised a home in an abandoned airplane, a relic of their country’s tumultuous past. Elimane, the bookworm, is as street-smart as he is wise. Clever Khoudiemata maneuvers to keep the younger kids—athletic, pragmatic Ndevui, thoughtful Kpindi, and especially their newest member, Namsa—safe and fed. When Elimane makes himself of service to the shadowy William Handkerchief, it seems as if the little family may be able to keep the world at bay and their household intact. But when Khoudi comes under the spell of the “beautiful people”—the fortunate sons and daughters of the elite—the desire to resume an interrupted coming of age and follow her own destiny proves impossible to resist.

A profound and tender portrayal of the connections we forge to survive the fate we’re dealt, Little Family marks the further blossoming of a unique global voice.

Reseñas de la Crítica

“A testament to Beah’s confidence as a writer and a remarkable storyteller.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Deeply affecting. . . . Little Family is an empathy-expanding story without the heavy gears of polemical fiction. . . . [Beah] conveys his unsettling assessment with a more delicate balance of tenderness and dread. . . . [The] little family have such a clear-eyed sense of their place as disposable members of society. To hear their story should make our confirmed blindness a little harder to maintain.” —The Washington Post

“Arguably the most-read African writer in contemporary literature.” —Vanity Fair

“[A] vibrant outing. . . . Beah informs his characters’ blend of street savvy and naïveté with bursts of details. . . . Fans of African postcolonial fiction are in for a treat.” —Publishers Weekly

“An ingenious setup. . . . readers will be drawn to discover what befalls a group fending for itself amid conflict and crime. Beah draws on both his life and imagination to depict children leading brave, provisional lives.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Beah portrays his characters with exquisite tenderness, imbuing them with a grace that belies their wretched situation. . . . In a work less harrowing but no less effective than Radiance of Tomorrow, Beah continues to speak eloquently to the impact of colonialism on generations of African children for whom freedom is merely an illusion.” —Library Journal

“Unflinching and unadorned, Beah’s novel provides an indelible portrait of desperate survival.” —Booklist (starred review)

Praise for A Long Way Gone:

“Everyone in the world should read this book.” —The Washington Post

“A breathtaking and unselfpitying account of how a gentle spirit survives a childhood from which all innocence has suddenly been sucked out. . . truly riveting.” —Time

“Deeply moving, even uplifting. . . Beah’s story . . . demands to be read.” —People

Praise for The Radiance of Tomorrow:

“Written with the moral urgency of a parable and the searing precision of a firsthand account . . . There is an allegorical richness to Beah’s storytelling and a remarkable humanity to his characters. We see tragedy arriving not through the big wallops of war, but rather in corrosive increments.” —The New York Times Book Review

get it and listen!

loved this book. Complex and multidimensional characters and clash of cultures and identity. excellent narration

Disappointed

I really wanted to love this book, especially after reading "A long way gone" but... alas, that was not to be! The first few chapters when looking at the different members of the little family were interesting. I would have preferred to learn more about each of the characters' history in order to understand them more though perhaps the author has his reasons for not going into their backgrounds. This would also have given the author a richer opportunity to explore the post-colonial scars on Zimbabwean life (or African life in general), which he touched on but didn't do enough with. I was annoyed that this book was supposed to be set in Zimbabwe however, none of the names of the characters, languages spoken or food eaten is accurate for that region of the world. Might as well have made up a fictional monolith African country.
The later chapters were predictable and corny and mostly focused on one character from the Little Family. The ending was abrupt. I would give 2.5 stars