The Other Side of Truth

£9.9
FREE Shipping

The Other Side of Truth

The Other Side of Truth

RRP: £99
Price: £9.9
£9.9 FREE Shipping

In stock

We accept the following payment methods

Description

Sade knew how worried Mama had been about his latest article. But Sade had never heard Mama try to stop him, like Uncle Tunde did. The novel begins in Laos, Nigeria, as Sade (pronounced shad-deh, with the pitch rising on the second syllable) and her brother Femi are getting ready for school. Sade hears gunshots and runs outside to find her father in their driveway, holding her mother’s unconscious body. Sade sees a growing bloodstain on Mama’s dress. Soon the doctor arrives and says Mama has no chance of surviving. I thought the story felt very realistic overall and Beverly Naidoo was able to convey how the characters felt quite well. I thought it was interesting that a lot of the story comprised of the students’ experiences at school. This part of the novel felt very YA to me but at the same time it’s important for us to realize that immigrants (refugees in particular) face a lot of challenges when they arrive in a new country. They have to get used to the customs, often the language (although Sade already spoke English in this novel), and they have to deal with peer pressure and fitting in. As Nigeria slid from one coup to the next, I became painfully aware of how difficult it was for people of honour to survive when corruption becomes a way of life. Nigerian friends in London told the same story. There was the awful irony of Nigeria experiencing its most brutal dictatorship, under General Sani Abacha, at the point when South Africa achieved the near miracle of its first democratic elections. Abacha’s execution of the internationally known writer Ken Saro-Wiwa in November 1995 carried special resonances. Making Papa a writer, in my novel, felt natural. My brother had been a journalist in South Africa and after his release from prison he, like other writers critical of the regime, had been banned from writing. Some of my own work, written outside the country, had been banned. Writers featured constantly in my research into Abacha’ s repression. It's been a long time since I read a middle grade novel that didn't make me want to tear my hair out because it's so plotless, or there's no character development. As an education student, I feel like I need to make a list of the good ones that I can use as future read-alouds in a classroom, and well-written middle grade novels are increasingly hard to find.

Perhaps based upon the story of Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed in 1995 for speaking out against the military regime at the time, The Other Side of Truth is an extremely well-woven narrative around a family's refuge and escape from political oppression. Told from the viewpoint of twelve-year-old Sade, Naidoo, whisks us across to a familiar land to the reader yet unfamiliar to brother and sister: a well-considered and powerful device in this circumstance. With no knowledge whether their father is alive or not, we the children are passed from pillar to post within the care system whilst the story of their father slowly builds up towards a powerful climax that highlights the corruption with in their home country.The family needs to get out of the country fast. Papa and Uncle Tunde decide it will be best to go to London, to the home of the children’s other uncle, Dele. The children are not allowed to tell anyone—not even their best friends—they are leaving. The government has seized Papa’s passport, and Uncle Tunde says it will take time to get him out of the country. However, he finds a woman, Mrs. Bankole, who is flying to London right away. She has two children, a boy and a girl, who are listed on her passport but are not traveling with her. She is willing to pretend that Sade and Femi are her children during the plane trip. The children have to leave right away—without Papa. Mrs. Appiah is a Ghanaian woman living in London. Mrs. Appiah is compassionate because when she finds Sade and Femi stranded, she takes them to an immigration lawyer to help them. Fortunately, the lawyer helps Sade and Femi get a family that adopts them. Mariam

I’ve told your father that it’s going to take a little time to get him a good passport. It will also be safer if he travels on his own. Uncle Tunde gazed down at his gold-rimmed spectacles dangling from his right thumb and finger. He seemed to be thinking about how to continue. Rebel Voices: Disruptive Stories from Trailblazing Women - a new Puffin Classics collection, celebrating International Women's Day 2023 Naidoo never falls into the trap of making this a narrative of white saviours, or painting England as a rescuing paradise: Femi and Sade are traumatised, and they want to go home. Their struggle is theirs, their bravery comes from their identity and although they find friends in England, their longing for Nigeria, the past and home is unquenchable and the author never shies away from exploring their complex emotions. Grief burst around them like a pierced boil. All about her, Sade heard people repeat fragments of the story. Mr. Falana, one of their neighbors and also Papa’s editor-in-chief, had heard both the gunshots and the getaway car. In the deathly hush that followed, he had peeped out from his own gate on the other side of the road. Seeing the entrance to the Solaja house wide open, he feared the worst and rushed across, followed by his wife still in her dressing gown. It was he who had helped Papa carry Mama inside. Now he had to hurry away to warn his other staff. Papa was the most outspoken journalist on Speak, one of the weekly newspapers in English, but he might not be the only target. Even before any newspaper headlines, the news would be darting by word and mouth along the pavements, highways and cables of Lagos. When the news reached Mama’s friends at the hospital where she worked, there would be no end of visitors. Suffocated by arms and voices and with the echo of the gunshots still in her head, Sade felt the urge to escape. When Papa writes articles for the newspaper, he always tells the truth. Uncle Tunde has often warned Papa not to write articles that upset Nigeria’s leaders, but Papa always says, “The truth is the truth. How can I write what’s untrue?” His latest article, which probably angered the people who killed Mama, criticizes Nigeria’s leaders for sending their children to school in Europe and America while Nigerian schools fail. Uncle Tunde reads part of this article out loud and shouts at Papa, saying that he is risking his own children for the sake of everyone else’s.

These are the opening words of the novel. The story opens with this scene of horrific violence that no schoolgirl should ever have to see or hear or experience. Nothing is known about this family yet except the daughter's name. Therefore, the scene creates no emotional resonance in particular. What this opening succeeds in doing instantly is establishing a setting and milieu. The only contextual information are the words "Lagos, Nigeria" between the chapter number and the chapter title, "Survivors." Since most readers are unlikely to know much detail about that setting, the effect—and possibly purpose—of this scene is to alert them that they are about to read a story where violence is part of the norm. Sade lives in Nigeria with her mother (a nurse), her father (a journalist), and her younger brother, Femi. Her father writes articles for the last remaining newspaper in Nigeria that dares to publish the truth about Nigeria's brutal military government. I read The Other Side of Truth. I liked that the book was about a poor country with a corrupt government. I also liked how the author gave me a point of view of the refugees. I also liked how the author was so realistic with his descriptions and about the children and the situation they were in. It made me sad knowing that there are so many refugees that go to different countries just like Sade and Femi just to be safe. How does the author balance adult-centered ideology and the child reader's perspective in The Other Side of Truth?



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
  • Sold by: Fruugo

Delivery & Returns

Fruugo

Address: UK
All products: Visit Fruugo Shop