Burma Boy by Biyi Bandele-Thomas
In his remote homeland a few months ago, fourteen-year-old Ali Banana was apprenticed to a blacksmith who wielded a whip. As the battle enters its most vital phase in the winter of 1944, Ali is a private in the Thunder Brigade. His unit has been instructed to sneak into enemy territory and cause mayhem. The Burmese jungle, however, is a mud-strewn, perilous area that is home to Japanese snipers, madness, and sickness. The most brutal battlefield of the Second World War is described in “Burma Boy,” a horrifying, beautifully realized story of the madness, the sacrifice, and the black humour there. A youngster tries to live long enough to mature into a man in this touching narrative as well.
Burma Boy by Biyi Bandele-Thomas
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In the winter of 1944, fourteen-year-old Ali Banana, an apprentice blacksmith, answers King George’s call to battle the Japanese in Burma. He is a private in the Thunder Brigade and finds himself in the Burmese bush, behind enemy lines, with orders to inflict as much damage as he can.
The coming-of-age story of a Nigerian soldier in the Burma campaign during World War II playfully referred to as Ali Banana, is simply amazing, enthralling, delightful, and unforgettable. It’s both funny and sad. The dialogues are infused with the jovial vitality of Nigerian English. The conversation amongst Hausas, Yorubas, Ibos, and Tivs who are forced into the same unit further adds to the tension, as do the emotions of their occasionally bewildered British officers and NCOs.
Lighthearted scenes of the Nigerians deploying into Burma quickly turn terrible as they battle Japanese suicide formations trying to drive them out of White City. Leeches are also present. The talented Nigerian playwright Biyi Bandele combined the war tales he had heard from his father with the information he had learned while conducting background research on the soldiers from Britain’s African colonies fighting the Japanese in Burma, the 1944 Chindit campaign, and the illustrious Major General Orde Wingate, who led the Chindits.
