Bursting with life and a rough joyfulness,Black Mamba Boyis debut novelist Nadifa Mohamed's vibrant, moving celebration of her family's own history. In his travels, Jama will witness scenes of great humanity and brutality he will be caught up in the indifferent, grinding machine of war he will crisscross the Red Sea in search of working papers and a ship. He slings himself from one perilous city to another, fiercely enjoying life on the road and relying on his vast clan network to shelter him and point the way to his father, who always seems just a day or two out of reach. So begins Jama's extraordinary journey of more than a thousand miles north all the way to Egypt, by camel, by truck, by train, but mostly on foot. Jama decides to spend her life's meager savings on a search for his never-seen father the rumors that travel along clan lines report that he is a driver for the British somewhere in the north. When his motheralternately raging and lovingdies young, she leaves him only an amulet stuffed with one hundred rupees. For Jama, life is a thrilling carnival, at least when he can fill his belly. Jama is a "market boy," a half-feral child scavenging with his friends in the dusty streets of a great seaport.
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