Moses, Citizen and Me » (New)

Delia Jarrett-Macauley is a writer, broadcaster, and academic, and the author of The Life of Una Marson, 1905-65, a biography of the BBC's first black program maker.

When Julia flies in to war-scarred Sierra Leone from London, she is apprehensive about seeing her uncle Moses for the first time in 20 years. But nothing could have prepared her for her encounter with her eight-year-old cousin, Citizen, a former child soldier, and for the shocking truth of what he has done. Driven by a desire to understand Citizen, Julia takes the disturbed child into the bush. There they meet other child soldiers, and a storyteller, Bemba G., who provides a safe haven for them all and strives to return them to childhood through play, love, story-telling, and performance. As Julia gradually rediscovers Africa, the different generations of her family rediscover their bonds. And then Bemba G. directs the child soldiers in a version of Julius Caesar, with powerful effect.