Sirocco Express
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
What are the causes of human migration? What drives people to leave their native countries? You may think it's the allure of a better life or political persecution. Think again. Think deeper. Open your mind. That's what this remarkable book prompts you to do. See the world on the other side of the `wall', but see it differently.
The book follows the story of a young Nigerian man, Adebayo, who has a comfortable life in his home country, who is not persecuted or wanted, yet he leaves his home one day and embarks on a perilous and arduous journey to Europe that may well claim his life. What has moved him to take such a drastic step? Would you risk your life unless you were really desperate?
Adebayo doesn't risk his life on a whim. He has very good reasons to do what he does. He is indeed desperate, but his despair is caused not by starvation or disease.
As with most of us, Adebayo can't stop thinking about his life and its place in the greater scheme of things. And what he comes to realise with horror is that the greater scheme has no place for him at all.
The average life has a monotonous pace. Very little of what we do has a meaning or long term effects. Almost nothing has any interest to anyone outside our households. When we speak, no one hears. Self-expression becomes almost pointless. `When will you understand that you are invisible,' Adebayo tells himself. `That ...no one has the slightest interest in what you think, or feel or do? You are as a grain of dust on the hide of an elephant.'
Adebayo suffers from his own insignificance. And he is determined to make an impression on the wider world, to break free from the monotony of the everyday life. This journey is his cry for help, his desperate bid for freedom.
This brilliant book offers an undeniably unconventional, yet very convincing, take on the causes of migration. People migrate not simply because they seek a prosperous life. They do so because they seek a fulfilled life. It's not only deprivation that compels people to go to the extremes of suffering in order to change their abode. People migrate for the same reasons they conquer Everest, for the same reasons they create and invent - to overcome their own insignificance, to leave a mark on this world. In that, this book has a truly universal appeal. No matter who you are or what you strive for, you are bound to connect with Adebayo and admire his quest...
The book follows the story of a young Nigerian man, Adebayo, who has a comfortable life in his home country, who is not persecuted or wanted, yet he leaves his home one day and embarks on a perilous and arduous journey to Europe that may well claim his life. What has moved him to take such a drastic step? Would you risk your life unless you were really desperate?
Adebayo doesn't risk his life on a whim. He has very good reasons to do what he does. He is indeed desperate, but his despair is caused not by starvation or disease.
As with most of us, Adebayo can't stop thinking about his life and its place in the greater scheme of things. And what he comes to realise with horror is that the greater scheme has no place for him at all.
The average life has a monotonous pace. Very little of what we do has a meaning or long term effects. Almost nothing has any interest to anyone outside our households. When we speak, no one hears. Self-expression becomes almost pointless. `When will you understand that you are invisible,' Adebayo tells himself. `That ...no one has the slightest interest in what you think, or feel or do? You are as a grain of dust on the hide of an elephant.'
Adebayo suffers from his own insignificance. And he is determined to make an impression on the wider world, to break free from the monotony of the everyday life. This journey is his cry for help, his desperate bid for freedom.
This brilliant book offers an undeniably unconventional, yet very convincing, take on the causes of migration. People migrate not simply because they seek a prosperous life. They do so because they seek a fulfilled life. It's not only deprivation that compels people to go to the extremes of suffering in order to change their abode. People migrate for the same reasons they conquer Everest, for the same reasons they create and invent - to overcome their own insignificance, to leave a mark on this world. In that, this book has a truly universal appeal. No matter who you are or what you strive for, you are bound to connect with Adebayo and admire his quest...
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Sirocco Express is a powerful novel of journey, discovery and how to be human in an increasingly inhuman world. Adebayo, a young Nigerian, leaves his home in Lagos and embarks on an extraordinarily difficult journey to try to discover a better life in Europe. The journey is in marked contrast to the comforts and familiarity of home which are touched on very effectively in the first few chapters, although even so the themes of potential displacement and dis-content are never absent. I did find the final scenes between Adebayo and his father in this section, brief though they are, particularly moving.
Once established on his flight to the "good life", Abebayo finds himself in a shockingly unfamiliar world, accompanied by people smugglers and desperate companions, most of whom it would be wiser not to trust. In these circumstances, he must find his feet and try to carve out a place for himself. It is here that his instincts to do what is right bring him into dangerous conflict with the smugglers and make him what is essentially a marked man. The descriptions of the journey taken and of the people the migrants meet along the way are measured and clear, and it is especially interesting how the beauty of the landscape becomes bleak, coloured by the reasons for the journey itself.
On the way, there are moments of high drama, danger and death, placed alongside well-researched realism of how the people smuggling process actually operates. The final destination of Adebayo's travels, the ups and downs of his secret new life and the clever twist at the end are well worth the journey. Taken as a whole, the character of Adebayo in fact becomes a type of modern "Everyman" figure as his story, although unfamiliar in its detail to most of us in the West, contains elements of desire, search, vision and need common to us all. Indeed, with this in mind, there are also echoes of the novels of Paul Coelho in the way Sirocco Express is written: in short, it's one to read, one to ponder over and one to keep.
Once established on his flight to the "good life", Abebayo finds himself in a shockingly unfamiliar world, accompanied by people smugglers and desperate companions, most of whom it would be wiser not to trust. In these circumstances, he must find his feet and try to carve out a place for himself. It is here that his instincts to do what is right bring him into dangerous conflict with the smugglers and make him what is essentially a marked man. The descriptions of the journey taken and of the people the migrants meet along the way are measured and clear, and it is especially interesting how the beauty of the landscape becomes bleak, coloured by the reasons for the journey itself.
On the way, there are moments of high drama, danger and death, placed alongside well-researched realism of how the people smuggling process actually operates. The final destination of Adebayo's travels, the ups and downs of his secret new life and the clever twist at the end are well worth the journey. Taken as a whole, the character of Adebayo in fact becomes a type of modern "Everyman" figure as his story, although unfamiliar in its detail to most of us in the West, contains elements of desire, search, vision and need common to us all. Indeed, with this in mind, there are also echoes of the novels of Paul Coelho in the way Sirocco Express is written: in short, it's one to read, one to ponder over and one to keep.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Tony Judge writes with conviction and compassion. This is beautiful, mature writing. His knack for wonderful and often unusual turns of phrase make it almost effortless reading, and extremely compelling.
He deploys imagery with skill and flair, always knowing exactly when and where to place a metaphor for optimum impact. The reader gets a genuine sense of the scale and grandeur of the enterprise.
The story is told with unsentimentally but with pathos aplenty, and it stays with the reader long after the book is closed.
He deploys imagery with skill and flair, always knowing exactly when and where to place a metaphor for optimum impact. The reader gets a genuine sense of the scale and grandeur of the enterprise.
The story is told with unsentimentally but with pathos aplenty, and it stays with the reader long after the book is closed.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Fascinating thought provoking reading
I began this book the day that I bought it then read no other book until I had completed all of this fascinating story. Read more
Published 12 days ago by Marcus
Well paced insight into illegal immigration
I'd been meaning to getting around to reading this for a while, but never quite had the opportunity. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Damon Lord
Sirocco Express
An incredibly fascinating insight into the world of people trafficking, seen through the eyes of the main character Adebayo. Read more
Published on 17 May 2009 by Mr. K. J. Brooke
Sirocco Express
This book is unbelievably enthralling. The tale of a young Nigerian, called Adebayo, and his danger-filled adventures, as he travels from Nigeria to England. Read more
Published on 25 Sep 2008 by Andrew Kirk
Sirocco Express
Tony Judge writes with compelling realism, and the voice of his MC, Adebayo, inspires both compassion and sympathy in the reader. Read more
Published on 15 Aug 2008 by Ms. B. Whitehead
Sirocco Express
Sirocco Express tells the story of Adebayo, a young Nigerian boy. He is intelligent, very well read, with an over-active imagination and driven to seek out and experience his idea... Read more
Published on 7 July 2008 by Mrs. Jillian King
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