Subhi is a member of the Rohingya people of Burma. Not that he has much cause to dwell on his homeland because he has never actually set foot in it. He was born in a refugee camp and his entire existence is defined by razor wire, and the casual brutality of the guards who oversee every waking moment. It is only in his dreams that Subhi breaks out and finds a universe of riches.
His days, however, are deprived and squalid which should make for depressing reading but Subhi is a cheerful soul with boundless optimism and an imagination as vast as the ocean he has never seen. He hoards stories like treasures and has a plastic duck by way of a friend, with whom he bickers companionably. In this way he makes his suffering, and that of his adored mother and sister, almost bearable.
Fraillon is an Australian who has given Subhi, whether intentionally or not, a vaguely Aboriginal lilt to his speech that makes The Bone Sparrow's narrative both musical and poetic.
Into this sea of deprivation sails Jimmie, who lives not far away outside the camp. We presume she is Australian as this is where many Rohingya refugees have actually been incarcerated but this is never explicitly spelled out. Jimmie and Subhi strike up an unlikely friendship after she finds a hole in the fencing. Emotionally adrift after losing her mother, Jimmie can't read and takes a precious book of her mother's to Subhi who is as hungry for new stories as Jimmie is to hear familiar old ones. In exchange she brings gifts of hot chocolate in a thermos and smuggled food, which astonishes Subhi's tastebuds, accustomed as they are to the daily gloop and slops issued by the authorities.
Subhi's endlessly sunny worldview masks the stultifying boredom of camp life, where there is no work, no entertainment and no succour of hope for a life beyond the razor wire. In a rare moment of despondency Subhi admits: “For years I didn't get it. That we aren't wanted in this place or in Burma, or in any other place. I didn't get it that we aren't wanted anywhere.”
This is a tragic, beautifully crafted and wonderful book whose chirpy, stoic hero shames us all. I urge you to read it.
The Independent
Zana Fraillon was born in Melbourne, but spent her early childhood in San Francisco. Her 2016 novel The Bone Sparrow won the ABIA Book of the Year for Older Children, the Readings Young Adult Book Prize and the Amnesty CILIP Honour. It was also shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Awards, the Queensland Literary Awards, the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, the Gold Inky and the CILIP Carnegie Medal.
She spent a year in China teaching English and now lives in Melbourne with her three sons, husband and two dogs. When Zana isn't reading or writing, she likes to explore the museums and hidden passageways scattered across Melbourne.
https://www.hachette.com.au/zana-fraillon/
Subhi is a refugee. He was born in an Australian permanent detention centre after his mother and sister fled the violence of a distant homeland, and the centre is the only world he knows. But every night, the faraway whales sing to him, the birds tell him their stories, and the magical Night Sea from his mother's stories brings him gifts. As Subhi grows, his imagination threatens to burst beyond the limits of the fences that contain him. Until one night, it seems to do just that.
Subhi sees a scruffy girl on the other side of the wire mesh, a girl named Jimmie, who appears with a notebook written by the mother she lost. Unable to read it herself, Jimmie asks Subhi to unravel her family's love songs and tragedies that are penned there.
Subhi and Jimmie might both find comfort-and maybe even freedom-as their tales unfold. But not until each has been braver than ever before and made choices that could change everything.
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