From the Bookshelf of Around the World in 80 Books…

The Last Brother

Nathacha Appanah,

Geoffrey Strachan (Translator)

Discussion: Books Set in Africa

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Books Set in Africa

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What Members Thought

Oct 27, 2017 Karen rated it really liked it

Shelves: travel-the-world

Appanah writes beautifully. Set in Mauritius, this book delves into a little known prison camp for immigrant Jews from Nazi occupied Austria and the Czech Republic whose ship had been turned away from Haifa which was then in Palestine. They were imprisoned for four years. The book, told from the point of few of a young boy is riveting.

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Oct 05, 2011 Beverly rated it liked it

Review coming shortly

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Feb 06, 2020 Tony rated it liked it

Shelves: comingofage, project-fit, translated-fiction, war-ww2, setting-africa, historical-fiction

Hadn't ever seen a book by a Mauritian author, so I picked this slim novel up. The story is narrated by Raj, an elderly man looking back to several months of his childhood in 1945. He was a sickly 10-year-old living in a shantytown with a fearsome alcoholic abusive father, loving but cowed mother, and two brothers who outshone him. Tragedy strikes and the family moves to another part of the island where his father takes a job as a prison gatekeeper. Oddly enough the prison contains European Jews ...more

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