Out of Shadows
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
'If I stood you in front of a man, pressed a gun into your palm and told you to squeeze the trigger, would you do it?'
'No, sir, no way!'
'What if I then told you we'd gone back in time and his name was Adolf Hitler? Would you do it then?'
Zimbabwe, 1980s.
The fighting has stopped, independence has been won and Robert Mugabe has come to power offering the end of the Old Way and promising hope for black Africans.
For Robert Jacklin, it’s all new: new continent, new country, new school. And very quickly he learns that for some of his white classmates, the sound of guns is still loud, and their battles rage on.
Boys like Ivan.
Clever, cunning Ivan.
He wants things back to how they were, and he’s taking his fight to the very top.
Winner of the Costa, the UKLA and the Branford Boase Awards
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wallace s debut, inspired by his own experiences as a teen, is a bleak, morally complex, and emotionally charged coming-of-age story set in Zimbabwe during the turbulent 1980s, just after Robert Mugabe s controversial rise to power. Robert Jacklin is a young man from England, whose family has moved to Africa as part of a diplomatic posting, and he s promptly sent to Haven, a prestigious boarding school struggling to cope with the new social order. Over the next few years, Robert deals with hazing, unconventional teachers, and his dysfunctional family, while trying to develop his own identity. Against his better judgment, he befriends cruel and controlling Ivan Hascott, a fellow white student, whose family has suffered under Mugabe s rule, and who urges Robert to join him in tormenting black Africans. Robert grows distraught over Ivan s increasingly violent actions, his own accountability, and the tumultuous state of the country. His turmoil finally builds to a climactic moment that will haunt him for the rest of his life. Racial conflict, corruption, and the cycle of abuse are conveyed with authenticity in this uncomfortable, unvarnished story. Ages 15 up.
