- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (Jun 9 2008)
- Language: English
All the stories in this collection can be read as stand-alone stories and because they are all so stunning, revealing and heartbreaking I feel like they deserve to be written about individually rather than together, so I here I go with a few thoughts on the first story and a link to where you can read the story for yourself:
"An Ex-Mas Feast", about a very young child prostitute and set in a slum in Nairobi, can be a tough story to read and if you're feeling particularly fragile it is, perhaps, not a story you will want to read. It's about tough situations and people just trying to do their best with the rotten cards they've been dealt. Although the lives of these protagonists and their stories will leave you shaking your head, Akpan makes no judgement on his characters and neither must you. Although this is a short story, Akpan manages to bring up several important issues like the importance of education in finding a way out of poverty, hunger, survival, family bonds and the importance of family especially at festival time.
To read the full story in the New Yorker, please go here
For an indepth review of this particular story please go here
