A Moonless, Starless Sky

Starred review from July 3, 2017
Okeowo, a staff writer at the New Yorker, offers an evocative and affecting portrait of contemporary Africa with four narratives featuring subjects from war-torn countries who are battling fundamentalism and medieval barbarity where they live. Okeowo, an American raised in Alabama by Nigerian parents, spent five years living in Africa and reporting from across the continent. The people she highlights include a couple from Uganda who met as teenagers when they were both kidnapped by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army; a Mauritanian activist waging a semisuccessful, but lonely, antislavery campaign; a dual account of a Nigerian girl who escapes from Boko Haram and a government worker who starts a vigilante task force against the group; and a women’s basketball team in Somalia that persists—and often thrives—despite deep prejudice and death threats against female athletes in that country. Through these narratives larger issues emerge, such as how ineffectual governments depend on vigilantes to protect their citizens from rebel groups such as Boko Haram, or the way families suffer intergenerational trauma when one or more members have violent experiences. In this memorable debut, Okeowo’s in-depth, perceptive reporting gives a voice to the extraordinarily courageous—and resilient—women and men fighting malevolent ideologies and organizations in their native countries. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency.

Starred review from July 1, 2017
Examining conflicts in four African countries through the eyes of those experiencing and trying to fight them.In this remarkable debut, New Yorker staff writer Okeowo, whose Nigerian parents moved to the United States, where she was born, explores significant conflicts in four African countries through the stories of individuals who have been victims of, but have also worked to combat, various forms of extremism. She delves into the lives of a couple who were victims of Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. She tells of a young woman kidnapped by Boko Haram who managed to escape and of a man who joined in a vigilante organization confronting that terrorist group directly. She pursues the story of a man fighting against pernicious (and putatively illegal) slavery in Mauritania. She shows the struggle for young women in Somalia just to do something as seemingly innocent as play basketball. The author focuses her unflinching gaze on only a handful of people in each case study, which allows her a level of depth and nuance that a wider cast of characters would render impossible. Each of her tales, based on five years of on-the-ground reporting, gets two chapters: one in Part 1, "The Beginning," and the other in Part 2, "The Aftermath." These latter chapters, however, do not necessarily reach a conclusion; rather, they reveal a middle in which anything, including tragedy, could surely still happen. Throughout, Okeowo writes with beauty and grace, and her subjects are compelling. Refreshingly, she does not give in to easy answers. In the cases where the extremists are radical Islamists, she makes it clear that oftentimes the victims of their radicalism are devout Muslims, that Christian leaders and politicians are often equally culpable in local problems, and that complexity--not simplistic good-guy/bad-guy narratives--is a dominant theme throughout the region. Cleareyed, lyrical, observant, and compassionate--reportage at its finest.

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October 15, 2017

New Yorker staff writer Okeowo grew up in Alabama and graduated from Princeton, but has spent most of her writing career reporting on stories in Africa. In this, her first book, she focuses on individuals in four war- and terror-torn African nations, individuals attempting to lead normal lives in the face of extraordinarily dangerous conditions. In Uganda, a young woman tries to build a life with her children and husband after escaping from the Lord's Resistance Army terrorist group that kidnapped her. Her husband had been part of the group that kidnapped her. In Mauritania, a man battles modern-day slavery in a country where the authorities long denied its existence. In Nigeria, a man devotes himself to fighting Boko Haram and a Chibok girl tries to find a normal life after escaping from her kidnappers. In Somalia, a girl is passionate about playing basketball in spite of death threats from Al-Shabab extremists and clerics who consider the women's sports teams un-Islamic. Countless books have been written on the larger conflicts in these countries, but Okeowo succeeds in evoking empathy for real people living there. VERDICT Of interest to readers following struggles with extremism in Africa.--Joel Neuberg, Santa Rosa Junior Coll. Lib., CA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2017
Journalist Okeowo spent five years reporting from Nigeria. Her work took her across the region, where she met many people whose lives had been dramatically changed by extremism. Eunice and Bosco, both kidnapped by the Lord's Resistance Army, escaped and set up a life together in Uganda. In Mauritania, Biram Dah Abeid became a leader in the movement to abolish slavery. In Nigeria, Abba Aji Kalli founded the Civilian Joint Task Force to fight back against the terrorists of Boko Haram. When Boko Haram attacked her school in 2014 and kidnapped 300 girls, Rebecca Ishaku escaped off the back of a truck. Aisha Hussien, in Somalia, began receiving death threats at age 11 for joining a women's basketball team. Okeowo compassionately tells their stories of resilience while providing historical and cultural context. Her descriptions of working as a reporter provide additional insight. A Moonless, Starless Sky is a captivating look at the on-the-ground effects of extremist groups and the people who live their lives in spite of them.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)