One night before putting him to bed, Enaiatollah’s mother tells him three things: don’t use drugs, don’t use weapons, don’t steal. The next day he wakes up to find she isn’t there. They have fled their village in Afghanistan but his mother has decided to return home to her younger children, leaving ten-year-old Enaiatollah alone in Pakistan to fend for himself. In a book that takes a true story and shapes it into a beautiful piece of fiction, Italian novelist Fabio Geda describes Enaiatollah’s remarkable five-year journey from Afghanistan to Italy where he finally managed to claim political asylum aged fifteen.

It’s amazing to think that while I was working, socialising, carrying on with my everyday life, a teenager on the other side of the world was fighting desperately for survival, living through dislocation and fear. For teenagers, this is a life changing story which could shake any complacency or self-interest and change their views of refugees forever.Although translations can sound a bit ‘clunky’, the boy’s voice shines through. Highly recommended for middle teens. Mrs O.
Reserve “In the Sea there are Crocodiles’ here.