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Young Adults

Irmán do vento

By Manuel Lourenzo González

About this book

Irmán do vento, this novel by M. Lourenzo González, was awarded the Premio Merlín in 2003. It is the story of Khaled, a boy living in a far-off village in Irak who, as any other boy, has a family, friends, a house, a life, love and projects. Until suddenly war breaks out. Irmán do vento is a chronicle of the endless destruction of all the things Khaled wanted to become. Irmán do vento is also a moving story about the fight against fate and the recovery of dignity and hope.

Irmán do vento is therefore an adventure novel with two narrators, one introducing the action and another, the main character, narrating what happens to Khaled, that Iraqi boy in the middle of a recent war. The action takes place in two time periods, the first narrator tells how the main character enters his life and how he finds him years later to give voice to him to describe the situation of his people in times of war. The novel reflects how children, the most vulnerable sector in society, live through war and how they suffer war’s hardest consequences without realising the causes or circumstances in which it happens.

Book fragment

My dear friend Alberte, aleykum salaam:

First day of October 2002 according to your calendar, 24th of Rayab according to the Muslim calendar. This is the first letter I am writing to you, my dear Alberte. My father has just given me this hard cover notebook with lined pages and a pen with dark blue ink. My teacher Mir Ashduf thinks I should practice writing as he thinks I have the skills to narrate stories; he wants me to become a katib, that is, a writer of books, and my father agrees. I am not sure whether this is true, I think that they just want to save me from lighting the hearth or getting wood from the forest. Both of them convinced my father that I should only take care of the sheep, so I will have more time to write the things that cross my mind. I am grateful to them, the fact is that a shepherd’s life is more comfortable. From morning till night you are in the valley of Orm or on the plains of Lwmikush, you play with your friends that are there with their flocks and you can do whatever you like without anybody telling you anything, and you can read. I bring the books I like and I read. Right now I have some stories by Yusuf Amin al-Sayf about cities that appear and disappear