Training | 2008.05.22
Paperback: Burma Boy, by Biyi Bandele
At just 14 years old, Ali Banana, a boy as sweetly goofy as his name, decides to leave his village in Nigeria and enlist as a volunteer with the Allied forces. Trained in India, he is sent to fight with the Chindits, a unit operating deep behind Japanese lines in the Burmese jungle. Based on the author\'s own father\'s wartime memories, this polyglot war story combines a classic coming-of-age tale with a graphic recreation of life in the besieged jungle stronghold of White City – Banana\'s ultimate destination. Bandele\'s elegant portrait of the real-life renegade leader of the Chindits, Brigadier Orde Wingate, reads as if he might have been a character dreamt up by Evelyn Waugh.
For more information, please visit
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entert[...]biyi-bandele-832701.html?r=RSS
