A flawed short story

Excellent story about the power of literature. It would have deserved four stars, if the author hadn't made a choice that compromises the whole message. The old man gives the protagonist a children's book by Chinua Achebe, Cheke and the River, which is appropriate for his age and which the boy naturally enjoys. But then he gives him Ngugi's Weep Not Child, about the Mau Mau in Kenya, which is definitely not for children and, even more shockingly, also Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, a satire of political corruption in newly independent Ghana, which, incidentally, is one of my favourite books in African literature, but possibly the least appropriate for a child to read. Moreover, the children in the short story read these quite disturbing novels, but show no sign whatsoever of having being troubled by them. Actually, they don't ask themselves or the old man any questions about them, as if the very powerful stories in those books didn't touch them at all. It looks like Beah did a bit of "name dropping" mentioning the titles of famous African books just like that simply because he thought he was writing for a Western readership only (and why on earth, only them?) who wouldn't notice anyway and, incidentally, both Ngugi and Armah wrote children's books as well. I found Beah's attitude very insulting. Moreover, the whole point of this short story is to show the power to influence people's minds and yet those powerful novels didn't have any impact on the young protagonist and his friends!

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