Short description
The true story of a girl's lost childhood and her fight for survival.
Long description
Mende Nazer's happy childhood was cruelly cut short at the age of twelve when the Mujahidin rode into her village in the remote Nuba mountains of Sudan. They hacked down terrified villagers, raped the women and abducted the children. Mende was them. She was taken and sold to an Arab woman in Khartoum. She was stripped of her name and her freedom. For seven long years she was kept as a domestic slave, an 'abid', without any pay or a single day off. Her food was the leftover scraps and her bed was the floor of the locked-up garden shed. She endured this harsh and lonely existence without knowing whether her family was alive or dead, for seven long years. Passed on by her master, like a parcel, to a relative in London, Mende eventually managed to escape to freedom. Slave is a shocking first-person insight into the modern day slave trade. It is also a fascinating memoir of an African childhood and a moving testimony to a young girl's indomitable spirit in the face of adversity.
Review
a powerful memoir...shocking and very moving...her book is an eloquent testament to the ability of a brave soul to survive, and to the need to bring an end to slavery. Susan McKay, Sunday Tribune All the cliches of such survival stories - 'life-affirming, heartwarming'- are inadequate to describe the emotional impact of [Mende's] eventual deliverance. Observer Intensely moving Waterstone's Books Quarterly An eloquent testament to the ability of a brave soul to survive, and to the need to bring an end to slavery Sunday Tribune