A Cowrie of Hope

Binwell Sinyangwe

I got really involved in Nasula's heartbreaking struggle to raise money for her much-loved daughter's education and desperately wanted her to succeed. The brilliant descriptions of hardship give you an in-depth understanding of the effects of poverty on individuals in developing countries, and the struggle to sell a bag of beans takes on an epic quality.

Extract

Nasula was poverty, she was loneliness and aloneness. Suffering was her life. She wore it like her own skin. A young peasant woman in her early thirties, beautiful and gracefully built, Nasula had no means and no dependable support. She was the gods' plant growing on poor soils without tendrils.

Parallels