Description

The #1 New York Times bestseller
Shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Writing

‘At once vivid and simple, lyrical and surgical, expressive and exacting’ Lupita Nyong’o

Dreams are today’s answers for tomorrow’s questions.

Eleven-year-old Kofi Offin has dreams of water, of its urgent whisper that beckons with promises and secrets. He has heard the call on the banks of Upper Kwanta, West Africa, where he lives. He loves these things above all else: his family, the fireside tales of his father’s father, a girl named Ama, and, of course, swimming. But when the unthinkable – a sudden death – occurs during a festival between rival villages, Kofi ends up in a fight for his life. What happens next will send him on a harrowing journey across land and sea, and away from everything he loves. Yet Kofi’s dreams may be the key to his freedom…

Publisher Review

"At once vivid and simple, lyrical and surgical, expressive and exacting, comforting and cutting" -- Lupita Nyong'o "a gripping coming-of-age story" * Guardian * "An intensely powerful coming-of-age story steeped in African tradition and mythology" * Waterstones * "An unflinching and essential reminder that African American history begins in Africa, not in slavery" * The School Librarian * "[Alexander's] most ambitious work to date... This is a powerful work which draws much of its power from its portrayal of Kofi's life among the Asante and Kofi's restlessly upbeat and curious, if rather innocent, nature" * Books for Keeps *