Now is the Time for Running
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4.2 • 9 Ratings
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the 2014 UKLA Award
Deo is a great footballer, a fierce protector of his older brother, Innocent. His brother is easily nervous, easily happy but good at keeping score on the dusty fields of Zimbabwe where the boys play.
Then Mugabe's soldiers come, destroying the only home the boys have known. Now, Deo has nothing but his brother, and a football stuffed with billions of worthless dollars. And so starts their journey to find their father. But with soldiers everywhere, they have only one chance to cross the border, one chance to escape.
In face of such a challenge, it is Deo's brotherly love that endures, his belief that he will lead them both to safety. Micheal Williams's is a masterful storyteller who pulls you along the journey of a lifetime. Deo and Innocent's journey is a universal story of hope in the face of despair, and the search for a better life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
South African writer Williams (The Genuine Half-Moon Kid) delves deeply into the oppression, poverty, and xenophobia that plague so many nations in Africa in this gut-wrenching story of an outcast, soccer-loving teen from Zimbabwe. When 14-year-old Deo's village is ravaged by soldiers, he must flee with his older brother, Innocent, who suffered brain damage at birth, which has left him childlike and sometimes unmanageable. The obstacles the boys must overcome traveling with no shoes and little money, confronting a hungry lion in a wild game reserve, and repeatedly withstanding prejudice and mistreatment as unwanted refugees move the story along briskly, while its genuine and relatable characters keep it grounded. There is plenty of material to captivate readers: fast-paced soccer matches every bit as tough as the players; the determination of Deo and his fellow refugees to survive unthinkably harsh conditions; and raw depictions of violence ("The fear eats at us, burns us.... Nobody knows where the men with sticks and axes will be"). But it's the tender relationship between Deo and Innocent, along with some heartbreaking twists of fate, that will endure in readers' minds. Ages 12 up.
