In Darkness
Winner of the 2013 Michael L. Printz Award This is the story of "Shorty"-a 15-year-old boy trapped in a collapsed hospital during the earthquake in Haiti. Surrounded by the bodies of the dead, increasingly weak from lack of food and water, Shorty begins to hallucinate. As he waits in darkness for...
show more
Winner of the 2013 Michael L. Printz Award This is the story of "Shorty"-a 15-year-old boy trapped in a collapsed hospital during the earthquake in Haiti. Surrounded by the bodies of the dead, increasingly weak from lack of food and water, Shorty begins to hallucinate. As he waits in darkness for a rescue that may never come, a mystical bridge seems to emerge between him and Haitian leader Toussaint L'Ouverture, uniting the two in their darkest suffering-and their hope.A modern teen and a black slave, separated by hundreds of years. Yet in some strange way, the boy in the ruins of Port au Prince and the man who led the struggle for Haiti's independence might well be one and the same . . .
show less
Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9781599907437 (1599907437)
ASIN: 1599907437
Publish date: January 17th 2012
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages no: 337
Edition language: English
Category:
Fantasy,
Young Adult,
Adventure,
Teen,
Cultural,
Survival,
Realistic Fiction,
Historical Fiction,
Adult,
War,
Contemporary
I always seem to have the same problem with duel-narrative books. I like one storyline more than the other. In Darkness is about a teenage gang member nicknamed Shorty. After he is shot in the arm, he’s taken to a hospital, but an earthquake causes the hospital to collapse on top of him. While tra...
“This is a work of fiction. That said, much in it is true. If you were hoping that some of the more unpleasant things you have just read were made up, then I apologise.” - Nick Lake, Author's Note1791-1804Toussaint L'ouverture turned his dreams of creating an independent, free black state into reali...
I'm not really sure the two perspectives worked for me. I much preferred the contemporary perspective and started to just march through the historical.
Powerful, gripping, haunting, and quite remarkable. This is a novel that has to be revisited multiple times to fully appreciate its richness and complexity.