Boy Overboard

Boy Overboard tells the story of an Afghan family’s struggle to escape the horrors of life in a ravaged country under a callous regime. In a fast-paced tale of escape and exile, bravery is set against brutality, peace is set against persecution, and, set against fanaticism, there is football! Jamal, who narrates the story, has to content himself with playing football with his friend Yusuf, an amputee, amidst a flotsam of fighting: abandoned tanks, unexploded landmines and rocket craters. His ten-year-old sister Bibi – a spirited soul and exclaimer of earthy effusions – refuses to content herself with staying indoors. When the secret school their mother runs is discovered by the authorities, the family are forced to flee both their home and their homeland.

The accusatory tone of the final chapter comes as quite a surprise. The end is not the new beginning the reader expects. Abandonment beckons – not asylum. Having survived landmines, firing squads and storms, we are left to wonder whether Jamal, his family and friends, are doomed to live in the ‘purgatory’ of an Australian-adminstered ‘transit’ island rather than their ‘Promised Land’, Australia itself.