"In clear, direct prose true to the boy’s viewpoint (“I’ve killed, and so I am one of them; I’ve become a man”), the writer, who escaped as a child from Sudan to Australia, imagines what he escaped from.... This first novel in the simplest words is a gripping narrative of innocence lost." - BooklistOn the day that Obinna’s village is savagely attacked by the rebel army and his father murdered, he witnesses violence beyond his imagination. Along with his older brother he finds himself thrown into a truck when the soldiers leave, to be shaped into an agent of horror — a child soldier. Marched through minefields and forced into battle, enduring a brutal daily existence, Obinna slowly works out which parts of himself to save and which to sacrifice in this world turned upside down.