Girl

Irish author, Edna O'Brien, has been witing for more than sixty years. Her latest novel, Girl, has been shortlisted for the James Tait Black award for a book published in 2019.

This is the story of Maryam, a young girl who with her classmates is abducted from the village school by members of the Boko Haram. The men had been looking for boys to turn into soldiers but when they only found girls the plans changed and the young students were taken as sex slaves.

Graphic descriptions are provided of the life of these young girls who were regularly raped and mistreated. Then Maryam married one of the soldiers and had a child. When the village was attacked one night Maryam escaped with the baby but her challenges were only beginning. She and another student, Buki, struggled to remain alive as they sought safety, but who can they trust? When Mayam was eventually reunited with her family she discovered that her problems were not over.

This is a moving story of the plight of many young women in Nigeria, persecuted because of religious rivalries and the strict structures in society which females are expected to adhere to. It is a story that needed to be told and is told well.

The novel was inspired after the abduction of a group of school girls in Nigeria by Boko Haram in 2014. In notes at the end of the book, the author writes briefly of research undertaken before writing the novel.

Girl by Edna O'Brien review - a masterclass of storytelling -  The Guardian 6 September 2019

276 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram six years ago - where are they now? - National Geographic March 2020.