Book Review: In the Sea There Are Crocodiles

"In the Sea There Are Crocodiles" is a true story of Enaiatollah Akbari. Enaiatollah Akbari is a young boy aged 10 (his own assumption when the story began) who was made to travel from one country to the other for various needs known to mankind - a home, a place to work and earn money, to eat and survive every day. There are moments of happiness and sadness in his virtual biography - I call it virtual because the author himself has stated that the book is not entirely his story. It's part truth and part fiction. The narration is so full of innocence that you will actually feel you are part of the story! This is easily one of the best books I have read!  

Target Audience:

1. Lovers of international fiction books, although there is more truth in the book than fiction!
2. Readers who love exploring different countries and their distinct cultures (however good / bad)
3. Readers who want to know the true life of Refugees - written in a very innocent way.

Plot: Consider a situation - Before going to sleep, a mother tells a child not to do drugs, not to use weapons and not to cheat. The child accepts and peacefully sleeps only to wake up and realize that the mother has left him.. for good! Thus starts the life of a refugee. And when a book starts with such a story, you are instantly attracted to it. There's no looking back. Young Enaiatollah Akbari starts living life on his own, making his own mistakes, trusting people he don't know - since he doesn't have any other option. Life takes him from his country Afghanistan to Pakistan, to Iran and so on till Italy. All in search of work, acceptance, to stand his own in this sea of crocodiles!

Writing: This book is written from a youngster's perspective. Its written in a narration format, as the young Enaiatollah Akbari describes his life story to the author Fabio Geda which includes travelling across countries in Asia and Middle-East, how people treat him and how he survived. It depicts how a young boy thinks, talks and understands what's happening in the world around him.

Here is an excerpt that will drive my point:

"Should I try and get it from him? I should point out that I was a lot smaller than them and there were more of them than me and they all looked  quite tough and not to be trusted. If I'd thrown myself on their leader, I'm ready to bet I would have ended up with broker bones and all my merchandise in their boxes. And what would it be like to tell osta sahib that everything had been stolen from me on the very first day? So, not out of fear, but rather because I'm the kind of person who thinks before doing something important, I had almost decided that it was better to lose a packet of chewing gum than my teeth.."

I genuinely loved the narration - the innocence of a young child clearly comes out of it!

Relevance in today's times: Being a citizen of a country that recognizes you and treats you like one of them is still unbearable and less than what the citizens expect from their country. Now imagine the life of a young refugee, who doesn't even have a country to call his own. As fellow human beings, we don't even know how to treat our own forms. This point is highlighted very clearly in this book. However, there are positives too - like the people who still help and support strangers with the best that they can provide without expecting anything back. 

If you have the will to fight and survive in this sea of human crocodiles (who are by far more dangerous than their animal counter-parts), chances are that you will end up getting what you want! I strongly recommend this book.

My Rating: 4.5 / 5

PS: This book review is part of Book Review Program at FlipItAll.com. The original review can be found here.