Genre Fiction
![Biyi Bandele-Thomas - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B001HPROAG.jpg)
Burma Boy. Biyi Bandele
A few months ago fourteen-year-old Ali Banana was apprenticed to a whip-wielding blacksmith in his rural hometown. Now its winter 1944, the war is entering its most crucial stage and Ali is a private in Thunder Brigade. His unit has been given orders to go behind enemy lines and wreak havoc. But the Burmese jungle is a mud-riven, treacherous place, riddled with Japanese snipers, insanity and disease. "Burma Boy" is a horrific, vividly realised account of the madness, the sacrifice and the dark humour of the Second World War's most vicious battleground. It's also the moving story of a boy trying to live long enough to become a man.
Readers Top Reviews
Kindle
I found this novel very disappointing and it seems to confirm the theory that the only good war novels are written by people that were actually there (exceptions on a postcard, please). The author is clearly not a military historian, but he seems proud of the research that he has done, and this leads him to make many unnecessary factual and historical errors. None of this would matter if it was a good story. Accounts of the RWAFF campaigns in Burma are few and far between and, almost without exception, written by the white officers. I had hoped that the author was going to use this novel to redress the balance, and give us a believable AOR's (African Other Ranks) account of the role and achievements of the Nigeria Regiment in the Chindit campaign. He has not even attempted it, settling for a slender story, with a ludicrous conclusion, that does no one justice. A missed opportunity.
Zulu Warriordanthest
Fourteen year old Ali Banana is an apprentice blacksmith in winter of 1944 when he answers the call from King George to fight the Japanese in Burma. Finding himself behind enemy lines in the Burmese jungle he is a private in Thunder Brigade with orders to go behind enemy lines and cause as mush havoc as possible. Battling against the jungle, enemy snipers, disease and the loss of many close friends and being so far from home he starts to question why he is there, a reasonably short story in large print, entertaining and well written, although the authors long, long sentences seem to lack full stops.
