Review of Miro by AE Nasr

I can hardly remember the last time a book made me cry.

I think it may have been 'The English Patient', by Michael Ondatye and yes, I would put Miro on the same bookshelf. This is a tale of of how the human heart can never be held prisoner, told through the events unfolding around a very simple boy, Miro and his brother Markus.

The brothers have been trapped in a cell together for a decade and the story of that survival is engrossing in itself, but it is just the beginning, as they find themselves suddenly able to escape and flee across the countryside trying to find the revolutionaries they left behind so long ago.

But Miro isn't the only hero in this tale. Equally brave, equally indomitable, are the women in the oppressed, almost post apocalyptic 'world after the invasion' that Nasr has created and I was so pleased with the ending because the final climactic scene is dominated not by Miro and his brother and their band of hapless ex-revolutionaries, but by the women of the village in which they seek refuge and redemption. It felt so right.

This book was rated 9.5 out of a possible ten in the recent Publishers Weekly BookLife Prize for Fiction and I can only say it deserved ten.

If you read Miro and do not cry, then you do not have a human heart.