Little Soldier

The plight of child soldiers is at last receiving media attention, and television images of boys serving in Zaire led Ashley to write this book. Kaninda Bulumba, his family butchered by the ruling tribe in his African homeland, joins his own tribe’s rebel forces. He fights until he is captured by UN peacekeepers and brought to London as a reluctant refugee. Kaninda dreams of going home for revenge, but instead is caught up in another, far more trivial tribal war, between rival gangs of youths in the dockland area where his adoptive family lives. Just as Lord of the Flies showed children’s violence in a context of adult warfare, so Ashley castigates all wars through a pointless but bloody local clash sparked off by teenage boredom and aggression. Kaninda is the pivotal figure in the novel’s skilful interweaving of two wars – one large and distant, one petty and near at hand. A note of qualified optimism concludes Kaninda’s tragic and convincing story.