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Shantytown Kid
Written by Azouz Begag (ed. Alec G. Hargreaves; trans. Naima Wolf and Alec G. Hargreaves)
Review by Adelaida Lower
What a delightful little book this is. Azouz Begag, the author, is a novelist, researcher, and, recently, the minister for equal opportunities in Chirac’s cabinet. The son of illiterate immigrants from Algeria, Begag knows what is like to be Arab, poor, and part of a despised minority. Shantytown Kid is the English translation of the autobiographical account of his experiences that Begag wrote in French in the 1980s (Le gone du Chaâba). It narrates his early adolescence and his transition from contentment to academic excellence. It is a comic, heartwarming coming-of-age story.
The odds are against young Azouz. LeChaâba, the shantytown where he lives, is a dismal collection of wooden shacks with communal toilets haunted by djnouns, evil spirits. The main attraction is the arrival of garbage trucks with “treasures” the kids fight over, risking “embankment disease”—probably tetanus. But Azouz wants more out of life. Obstinate and hard-working, he rises above cultural differences, suffering both the shunning of his Arab friends and the marginalization of the society at large. He struggles, at times ashamed of his origins, of his