Nosa, a young man from an indigent background, has aspirations to succeed in life. For him, leaving Nigeria is one of the ways to achieve that success. Still, he is resolutely against travelling by land to Europe, a common route for many and Leo’s proposal for overcoming their respective challenges.
Leo is Nosa’s best friend and Nosa tries to convince him against embarking on such a perilous journey. However, events conspire to force him into joining Leo and others on the journey. Thus begins an adventure through one of the hottest and grittiest places on the planet. Of course, for these migrants, surmounting the Sahara is only the beginning.
ACROSS THE SAHARA is a story of human survival. It is about African youths and some of the reasons why they embark on this most treacherous of journeys. In a bid to get to Europe, these migrants must take on one of nature’s most inhospitable terrains, the Sahara Desert.
Plot/Idea: 8 out of 10
Originality: 7 out of 10
Prose: 6 out of 10
Character/Execution: 7 out of 10
Overall: 7.00 out of 10
Assessment:
Plot: Across the Sahara tells the moving story of Nosa, a young Nigerian man who reluctantly joins his friend in traveling via land from Nigeria to Europe.
Prose: Emoyon's prose is solid, if prone to a degree of repetition and redundancy. Exposition can sometimes clutter the storytelling when dialogue is often enough to clue readers into the unfolding events and characters' emotional states.
Originality: With unique insight, Emoyon describes the reasoning behind taking a voyage as uncertain and dangerous as the one Nosa and Leo embark on, while also conveying the harrowing journey itself.
Character/Execution: Nosa is a well-established central character and Leo is similarly nicely developed. Their characterizations might be even stronger if the prose was slightly more focused and expository material was trimmed back.
Date Submitted: August 22, 2022
