No Heaven for Good Boys
"Marabout Ahmed, is a highly regarded Koranic teacher who runs a religious school for young boys in the capital city where Ibrahimah is sent to join his cousin Etienne to study for a year--the local custom for many families. Six-year-old Ibrahimah loves swiping pastries from his mother's kitchen, harvesting green beans with his father, and racing down to the beach after the mosque in search of sea glass with his sisters. But when he is approached in his rural village one day by a seemingly kind stranger, the tides of his life turn forever. Unbeknownst to Ibrahimah's parents, rather than teaching the boys, Marabout sends them out to beg in the streets in order to line his pockets. To make it back home alive, Etienne and Ibrahimah must help one another survive both the dangers posed by Marabout, and the myriad threats of the city: black market organ traders, rival packs of boys from other daaras, and mounting student protest on the streets. Transporting us between rural and urban Senegal, No Heaven for Good Boys shows the strength that can emerge when one has no other choice but to survive. Drawn from real incidents in metropolitan Senegal, No Heaven for Good Boys is provocative, finely rendered, and hauntingly urgent--an extraordinary debut novel that locates the universal through the story of two boys caught in the terrible sweep of history."--