In January 1991, when civil war came to Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, two-thirds of the city’s population fled. Among them was eight-year-old Asad Abdullahi. His mother murdered by a militia, his father somewhere in hiding, he was swept alone into the great wartime migration that scattered the Somali people throughout sub-Saharan Africa and the world.
This extraordinary book tells Asad’s story. Serially betrayed by the people who promised to care for him, Asad lived his childhood at a skeptical remove from the adult world, his relation to others wary and tactical. He lived in a bewildering number of places, from the cosmopolitan streets of inner-city Nairobi to the desert towns deep in the Ethiopian hinterland.
By the time he reached the cusp of adulthood, Asad had honed an array of wily talents. At the age of seventeen, in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, he made good as a street hustler, brokering relationships between hard-nosed businessmen and bewildered Somali refugees. He also courted the famously beautiful Foosiya, and, to the astonishment of his peers, seduced and married her.
Buoyed by success in work and in love, Asad put twelve hundred dollars in his pocket and made his way down the length of the African continent to Johannesburg, South Africa, whose streets he believed to be lined with gold. And so began a shocking adventure in a country richer and more violent than he could possibly have imagined.
A Man of Good Hope is the story of a person shorn of the things we have come to believe make us human—personal possessions, parents, siblings. And yet Asad’s is an intensely human life, one suffused with dreams and desires and a need to leave something permanent on this earth.
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"An extraordinary story. . . . A powerful testament to the resilience of humanity." --The Guardian (London)
"Razor-sharp. . . . [Steinberg] works from the inside out. He places himself at the living, palpitating, always fragile heart of a story-in-the-making. . . [A Man of Good Hope] trembles with the contingency of the lives Steinberg inhabits as a writer, as though the story itself, the telling of it, right now as you read, is implicated in his protagonist's fate." --Los Angeles Review of Books "An engrossing book. . . . Compelling. . . . The humanity, suffering and bravery of Mr Abdullahi are palpable and make A Man of Good Hope a book well worth reading." --The Economist "[Steinberg writes] true, relevant, modern narratives conveyed with such eloquence and poignancy they acquire almost Shakespearean gravitas." --The Spectator (London) "Beautifully recounted. . . . personal without being intrusive, educational without being preachy, and absolutely worth reading." --Pittsburgh Post-Gazette "A tale of luck, hustle, survival, and determination, A Man of Good Hope is an extraordinary examination of what it means to be human." --Buzzfeed "What a brave, important book. Steinberg's writing is so human, so humane and so honest. . . . Steinberg stands shoulder to shoulder with other great writers who have also made sensible and visible so much that might otherwise remain insensible and invisible out of the political and human tragedies all too common in Africa--Michela Wong, Ryszard Kapuscinski and Ishmael Beah. Steinberg's central question is one for all of us: what does it means to live a 'fully human life' and whom among us has either the courage or the luck to live that life?" --Alexandra Fuller, author of Scribbling the Cat "[A Man of Good Hope] tells one man's extraordinary and moving story, revealing the reality of life at the bottom of the world's worst pile." --The Times (London) "A masterpiece. Steinberg has illuminated a modern African odyssey to brilliant effect." --Martin Meredith, author of The State of Africa"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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