As intriguing as it is great company. I enjoyed reading this book that's closer home in terms of setting, characters, pace and writing style.
Thank you Netgalley for the eARC.

Saga wants nothing more than to live life his way. He spends most of his time listening to music, while imagining what it would be like if things were different than they are now. As the days go by, he learns more about girls and the world around him until the moment reality comes crashing down. It's then he's forced to confront the pain and heartache that surrounds his people while also doing his best to survive.

A well-written story, The Day Of The Orphan immerses us in Saga's plight. This is a boy who wants nothing more than to live life at his leisure. He has hopes and dreams, yearning for the moment when he can make them a reality. All that changes when he and his friends are pulled into the country's surrounding conflict.

Dr. Nat has woven such a spellbinding story that brings to light the plights of those living in Africa. While this story is fiction, you can tell that he's taken the time to weave real life into the story itself. Although many of us aren't from the region, we're familiar with the country itself and its everyday plights due to news reports and the media. The careful research done is apparent throughout the entire book.

The author has created what feels like a true-to-life character, one many can relate to. Saga experiences the usual things a teenager goes through—uncertainties, girls, love, decision-making, as well as what he wants to do with himself. Because of what the country is going through, it feels like he sometimes has to grow up faster than he meant to. Throughout the journey, however, he becomes stronger and more decisive despite the fact that he encounters several adversities along the way. No matter what happens, however, Saga is determined to survive, a certainty the author injects through every step of the story.

At a time when the world has just been revisiting the struggles and triumphs of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. fifty years after his assassination and the international community currently struggles to deliver an effectively appropriate response to Pres. Assad’s unacceptable treatment of the Syrian people, The Day of the Orphan reads as particularly relevant.

With character names like Com and Money, and a military installation called Fort Id staffed with Zombie (instead of puppet or martinet) troops, this often allegorical tale of Saga, his family, friends, classmates, and nation shares similarities with The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. In the fictional African nation of Zimgania the author draws parallels between President-for-Life-Until-Further-Notice Brewman “the Brute” and Cuba’s Castro, Cambodia’s Pol Pot, and Orwell’s 1984. Associations with the rise of the Third Reich and McCarthyism are also clear. In fact, except for one character’s remark about Nigerian author Chinua Achibe, the pop culture references are all Western, which reinforces the sentiment in this passage from page 203:

To internationalise our struggle is to attract more sympathisers to out cause, while attracting more outside opposition to this brute of a president who has usurped power!

The Day of the Orphan interweaves themes of civil rights violations, political tyranny, government corruption, and religious persecution with Saga’s journey from boyhood into manhood. Each step forward is influenced by internal and external demands and expectations about being a good son, brother, and wise man as the leader of the Orphan Society. Contrary to the group’s name there are many dedicated parents and adult advisors who are able and willing to support the Orphans. It is debate about exactly how and when to move forward that generates the most friction between the younger and older generations. Their non-violent versus defensive violence and/or preemptive strikes philosophies echo Rev. King’s approach versus Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture’s Black Panther strategies in the previous generation. Just like real life, working out the execution details of revolutionary change noticeably slows the tempo of the action.

Quandaries about gender roles and identity are embodied in a range of characters across the spectrum of conventional male to female expectations where Saga, Zara, and others alternately, sometimes simultaneously, conform and defy their labels assigned according to age, social class, and gender. An assortment of girls and women employ a variety of tactics to hold the boys and men in The Day of the Orphan accountable for their actions.

Although set during a time only three years after the terrorist attacks on the U.S. in September 2001 there is a sense of present-day relevance with the Orphans’ “Enough is Enough” mantra and the demands of young people around the world with their March for Our Lives movement.

Overall there is an upbeat tone of affectionate exasperation to the narrative summed up in the characters’ use of the phrase TIA, which means “This is Africa.” It’s a cross-cultural translation of a Gallic shrug.

[Sidebar thoughts: Is the Ghanaian author’s usage of the terms “African” and “Third World” by his Zimganian characters an allowance for “mainstream” readers? My (limited) understanding is that most citizens of African nations identify with their specific country rather than the continent similar to the way that Mexican, Canadian, and U.S. citizens don’t typically refer to themselves as North Americans. The author’s bio says he was raised with his family in exile in England, which may be a contributing factor to those language choices, or maybe it’s simply incidental usage of common parlance.]

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