Allah Is Not Obliged

Birahima, a foul-mouthed ten-year-old orphan from the Malinké country of northern Côte d'Ivoire, sets out to find his aunt and is swept into the 1990s civil wars of Liberia and Sierra Leone, becoming a child soldier passed from warlord to warlord. Kourouma maps a real and terrible West Africa: the boy's home in the north, the border crossing into war, the warlord camps of Liberia, and the diamond fields of Sierra Leone, all narrated in a child's blunt, dictionary-quoting voice.

Birahima

The Malinké home

The orphan

Birahima grows up in a Malinké village in the north until his mother dies, and he sets off with the con-man grigriman Yacouba to find his aunt across the border in Liberia. Kourouma establishes the boy's brash, profane narrating voice at once, a ten-year-old armed with four dictionaries and no illusions, about to walk straight into hell.

The opening chapters

inspired by Birahima's home in the Malinké country of northern Côte d'Ivoire, from which he sets out, is drawn from that real region; sited there at the edge of the setting.

Google Maps ↗ Street View ↗