51DePgwDwFL. SL160  The Other Hand (Little Bee) by Chris Cleave   Review

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The Other Hand (Little Bee) by Chris Cleave

Chris Cleave’s first novel, Incendiary, was an object lesson in the perils of relevance. Depicting the aftermath of a terrorist attack in Britain, it came out on July 7, 2005, and was at once – well, upstaged isn’t quite the word. Still, DeLillo’s line about the terrorist being the novelist’s great rival has rarely received more literal confirmation. Who wanted to read about fictional atrocities when London’s real death toll was still being reckoned?

Undeterred, Cleave is back with another ripped-from-the-headlines effort. Little Bee is a teenage asylum seeker who has barely escaped a horrible death in one of Nigeria’s unsung oil wars. For her trouble, she winds up doing two years in an Essex detention centre.

Review: The Other Hand by Chris Cleave – Telegraph.

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