The Other Side of Truth

The main characters are Sade and her younger brother Femi who live in Nigeria. Trouble starts when the mother is murdered in a drive by shooting by members of the military government. This is the culmination of threats made at their journalist father who writes “truth” for a local newspaper.

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For the safety of the children, who could be the next targets, Sade and Femi are sent to London. The couple who take them to London abandon the children upon arrival and Child Services step in and place them in temporary shelter. Because the children don’t know who to trust and cannot contact the uncle that was supposed shelter them, they give fake names and do not talk about what happened or how they came to be in London. The children don’t know if they will ever see their father again and are troubled by the memory of their mother’s murder and they become targets for bullies in the school they were placed.

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In Lagos twelve year old Sade and her ten year old brother Femi are getting ready for school when they hear the sound of shots: they find their mother lying dead in their father's arms in their driveway, after getting in the way of a bullet meant for her husband, a journalist on an English language

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newspaper who has received death threats for his criticism of the Nigerian government. Within hours further death threats have been received and Sade's father, Folarin Solaja, decides that both he and his children must leave the country at once. The same night the children are given into the care of a woman who will smuggle them into Britain where they can live with their uncle who teaches at a London college, while their father will travel separately under a false passport as his own has been siezed by the government. But when the children arrive in London their uncle does not meet them at Heathrow and they are abandoned by their so-called protector; when they attempt to trace their uncle at his college he has disappeared and has not been seen for a week. Wondering alone late at night on the streets of London the children are eventually found by police, and passed into the hands of social services to find them emergency accomodation. Not knowing whether their father has escaped from Nigeria they are frightened to give their real names, but as they are clearly traumatised they are granted temporary permission to stay in Britain and placed with a foster family. But what has happened to their uncle and will they be reunited with their father...

Much of the book deals with Sade's experience as she attempts to settle at her new school, where she is bullied by some of her new classmates, and the parallels between this and her father's experiences standing up to the authorities in Nigeria, give the books its title. Because she is from Africa she is assumed not to speak English, and not to able to spell her own name, whereas in fact Sade has been brought up speaking English as well as Yoruba from birth, and is a well-educated girl who attended a good school in Lagos. These assumptions don't seem particularly racist in character, as some of the bullies are Caribbean in origin, but seem more to reflect the stereotypes that children might pick up about Africa given what is normally seen on the television. I was particularly interested in the portrayal of schools in the U.K. versus schools in Nigeria as I work closely with someone of Nigerian origin who has sent her own children to boarding school there in preference to them attending the schools locally. Saying that in my son's class there are three children from Nigeria who have gone the other way.

Altogether a good YA read, with some similarities to Pigeon English that I read earlier in the year.

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In a single moment. Sade's entire world is shattered by the same bullets that kill her mother. Forced to flee for their lives, Sade and her brother journey to England. Leaving behind their home and family in Nigeria is hard enough, but as they soon learn, escaping injustice is much harder...
'A

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marvelous read...that refuels the desire for justice and freedom.'

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Really loved this book. Probably could've read it all in one sitting if I'd had the time.

There were a few places where I could have cried, Naidoo did a really good job of writing the character so you sympathised with her.

The course materials mention a sequel which deals with Femi which I would like

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to read as he's so closed off in this book that sooner or later all that anger and hurt will have to come out.

Really interesting book to study too, decided to use it as one of the books to write about in my essay.

Was surprised to learn Beverley Naidoo is a white South African, I was expecting her to be Nigerian as the book felt very personal.

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