This is a small volume that contains the harrowing journey of one man from a safe city with no prospect to the wild unknowns of Europe.
It begins with our protagonist Nosa, who has always been a good student, but he is stuck with no jobs in sight once he is done with his schooling. A chance meeting sets him down a road from which there is almost literally no return.
We have details about the kind of people involved in the facilitation of such ‘transport’ and all the various ways people can get lost on the way. Even the ones who make it, it remains to be seen what their future holds. The whole issue is very topical, with the conversation continuing over the last couple of years with the numerous lives lost and the middlemen who fleece unsuspecting people.
Nosa is an ordinary character, with flaws and ambitions and a slight strain of good luck which makes him a character one could root for. That said, I felt a lack of depth about the whole ordeal. The words conveyed a grim image, but I felt like I was reading about him instead of anything deeper than that.
It is a good book and provides a valuable introduction to this situation, but I was left wanting to be more invested.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.
Superfluous Reading 