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Title details for Song for Night by Chris Abani - Available

Song for Night

by Chris Abani
ebook
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“A devastating portrait of a boy holding onto the shreds of his innocence during a war that deliberately, remorselessly works to yank it away.”—Los Angeles Times
 
Part Inferno, part Paradise Lost, part Sunjata epic, Song for Night is the story of a West African boy soldier’s terrifying yet oddly beautiful journey through a nightmare landscape of brutal war in search of his lost platoon. The mute protagonist—his vocal cords cut to lower the risk of detection by the enemy—writes in a ghostly voice about his fellow minesweepers, the things he’s witnessed, and the things he’s done, each chapter headed by a line of the sign language these children invented. This “immersive and dreamlike” novella (Publishers Weekly, starred review) by a PEN/Hemingway Award winner is unlike anything else written about an African war.
“Not since Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird or Agota Kristof’s Notebook Trilogy has there been such a harrowing novel about what it’s like to be a young person in a war. That Chris Abani is able to find humanity, mercy, and even, yes, forgiveness, amid such devastation is something of a miracle.”—Rebecca Brown, author of The End of Youth
“Impressive and fast-paced…narrated with such dry and lucid precision that it brings to mind Babel, Hemingway, McCarthy.”—Esquire
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Publisher: Akashic Books

Kindle Book

  • ISBN: 9781936070466
  • Release date: September 1, 2007

OverDrive Read

  • ISBN: 9781936070466
  • Release date: September 1, 2007

EPUB ebook

  • ISBN: 9781936070466
  • File size: 724 KB
  • Release date: September 1, 2007
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Formats

Kindle Book
OverDrive Read
EPUB ebook

subjects

Fiction Literature Historical Fiction

Languages

English

“A devastating portrait of a boy holding onto the shreds of his innocence during a war that deliberately, remorselessly works to yank it away.”—Los Angeles Times
 
Part Inferno, part Paradise Lost, part Sunjata epic, Song for Night is the story of a West African boy soldier’s terrifying yet oddly beautiful journey through a nightmare landscape of brutal war in search of his lost platoon. The mute protagonist—his vocal cords cut to lower the risk of detection by the enemy—writes in a ghostly voice about his fellow minesweepers, the things he’s witnessed, and the things he’s done, each chapter headed by a line of the sign language these children invented. This “immersive and dreamlike” novella (Publishers Weekly, starred review) by a PEN/Hemingway Award winner is unlike anything else written about an African war.
“Not since Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird or Agota Kristof’s Notebook Trilogy has there been such a harrowing novel about what it’s like to be a young person in a war. That Chris Abani is able to find humanity, mercy, and even, yes, forgiveness, amid such devastation is something of a miracle.”—Rebecca Brown, author of The End of Youth
“Impressive and fast-paced…narrated with such dry and lucid precision that it brings to mind Babel, Hemingway, McCarthy.”—Esquire
Expand title description text
Fiction Literature Historical Fiction