In darkness I count my blessings like Manman taught me. One. I am alive.Two. There is no two.Trapped beneath the rubble of the Haitian earthquake of 2012,a teenage boy is terrified,desperate and alone.A child of the slums,Shorty has been drawn into the world of the gangsters who rule his broken city,a world that turns dreams into dust and boys into killers.But Shorty has a secret: a flame of revenge that burns inside him,a flame that fires his resolve to find the twin sister stolen from him seven years ago.In the darkness the line between the present and the past begins to blur and,as Shorty fights for life,his struggle becomes part of a two-hundred-year-old story - a story of courage and betrayal,of freedom and of hope.For Shorty may not be quite as alone as he believes.Sometimes,on the other of darkness,there is only death... And sometimes there is light.
MEDIA REVIEWS
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLCISBN: 9781408824184Number of pages: 352Weight: 466 gDimensions: 216 x 135 x 30 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
Nick Lake weaves Haiti's dark past with its painful present into a story that is gripping,moving and uplifting. This novel dances with extraordinary confidence from one era to another,mixing the contemporary with the historical to create a rich and fascinating dialogue across the centuries...Stunningly original and hard-hitting Will Sutcliffe In Darkness is both violent and subtle,unexpectedly reminding me of The Wire. Characters,settings,and the half-believed Haitian vodou religion are handled with patience and complexity,even in a terrifying,poverty-stricken setting...Lake doesn't shy away from Shorty's immersion in gang culture,nor the profanity that permeates it and Short's own participation in its brutality and murder...In Darkness is a serious,nuanced,challenging novel - Patrick Ness Guardian (Lake) has given Shorty a vivid,unforgettable voice; this is about a lifelong battle for survival,and the hard-won ending is incredibly moving The Times In Darkness is both a searing indictment of man's inhumanity to man and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit Daily Mail Remarkable...Mr. Lake's elegant,restrained prose and distinct characters will reward adults and older teenagers able to brave a story with strong language,harrowing scenes of brutality and an almost painful stab of joy at the end Wall Street Journal In Darkness is complex,human and enormously gripping...Linking the Haitian ganglands with a world where magic happens and death sometimes does not,it is a novel that feels,in parts,like an episode of The Wire as retold by a Cloud Atlas-era David Mitchell...Which is to say that In Darkness is brutal and stark,poetic and soulful - and definitely worth keeping the light on for Scotland on Sunday
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