Walking the Bowl: A True Story of Murder and Survival Among the Street Children of Lusaka Hardcover – February 15, 2022 by Chris Lockhart , Daniel Mulilo Chama

Description

Author: Lockhart Chris

Edition: Original

Package Dimensions: 28x235x517

Number Of Pages: 304

Release Date: 15-02-2022

Details: Product Description
For readers of
Behind the Beautiful Forevers
and
Nothing to Envy
, this is a breathtaking real-life story of four street children in contemporary Zambia whose lives are drawn together and forever altered by the mysterious murder of a fellow street child.

Based on years of investigative reporting and unprecedented fieldwork,
Walking the Bowl immerses readers in the daily lives of four unforgettable characters: Lusabilo, a determined waste picker; Kapula, a burned-out brothel worker; Moonga, a former rock crusher turned beggar; and Timo, an ambitious gang leader. These children navigate the violent and poverty-stricken underworld of Lusaka, one of Africa’s fastest growing cities.

When the dead body of a ten-year-old boy is discovered under a heap of garbage in Lusaka’s largest landfill, a murder investigation quickly heats up due to the influence of the victim’s mother and her far-reaching political connections. The children’s lives become more closely intertwined as each child engages in a desperate bid for survival against forces they could never have imagined.

Gripping and fast-paced, the book exposes the perilous aspects of street life through the eyes of the children who survive, endure and dream there, and what emerges is an ultimately hopeful story about human kindness and how one small good deed, passed on to others, can make a difference in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
Review
“A vivid, unforgettable account of life at the margins of the margins. This book will transport you to a world you didn’t know existed but that you will never fully leave behind. Chris Lockhart and Daniel Mulilo Chama have achieved something extraordinary: reporting so deep that you’ll want to read passages again and again, combined with storytelling so propulsive that you’ll need to forge ahead to the last page.”

—
Ty McCormick, senior editor of
Foreign Affairs
and author of
Beyond the Sand and Sea: One Family’s Quest for a Country to Call Home

“An astonishingly beautiful book. Beautiful in its biting reality. Beautiful in its unearthing of life’s deepest, darkest voids. Beautiful in its depictions of land and cityscapes, great and small.
Walking the Bowl is one of the most revealing and heart-rending books I have ever read.”

—Thomas Lockley, coauthor of African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan

“A powerful, beautiful book. Lockhart and Chama throw us into the whirlpool of cruelty, solidarity, triumph and resilient survival of street children in Zambia, Africa, telling the beautiful stories of these kids’ humanity and forcing us to recognize that most are dying much too soon and too hard.”

—Philippe Bourgois, author of In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio

“Told like a picaresque adventure story,
Walking the Bowl captures magnificently the spirit of a hard, hard world. An enviable feat of writing and of sympathy.”

—Jonny Steinberg, author of A Man of Good Hope