The African Boy

<p>This novel imagines the journey of a real but until now long-forgotten African boy who left Elmina in the Gold Coast in 1829 on a British ship for the hope to travel to Holland. His ship was wrecked on rocks in January 1830 on the Isles of Scilly Cornwall.</p><p>With a strong narrative drive the story evokes the hard life on board a sailing ship. It relates the boy’s meeting with members of the crew and his growing awareness of their world and its differences to his. </p><p>The African boy Kwame who is unnamed and buried on St. Martin’s is a feisty clever and ambitious young man whose relationships with the crew expose the violence bigotry and hypocrisy of the world they came from.</p><p>This book explores the worlds of Europe and Africa. Its characters are vividly drawn and the story evokes a changing world at a time when slavery was being defeated.</p>