Boys without Names [Paperback]

Trapped.

For eleven-year-old Gopal and his family, life in their rural Indian village is over:We stay, we starve, his baba has warned. They flee to the big city of Mumbai in hopes of finding work and a brighter future. Gopal is eager to help support his struggling family, so when a stranger approaches him with the promise of a factory job, he jumps at the offer.

?But there is no factory, just a stuffy sweatshop where he and five other boys are forced to work for no money and little food. The boys are forbidden to talk or even to call one another by their real names. Locked away in a rundown building, Gopal despairs of ever seeing his family again.

But late one night, when Gopal decides to sharekahanis, or stories, he realizes that storytelling might be the boys' key to survival. If he can make them feel more like brothers than enemies, their lives will be more bearable in the shop—and they might even find a way to escape.

Sheths lush prose creates a vivid portrait of slave labor without losing the thread of hope that Gopal clings to.Kashmira Sheth gives a name to the pernicious practice of child bondage in her unforgettable portrait of Gopal, a boy enslaved in a grueling factory job in India. And she shows the power of story telling to inspire acts of kindness and courage in even the darkest of situations.Boys Without Names is not a heartbreaking story, even if there are moments that break the heart. Instead, it is a story about growing up, about learning and relearning the meaning of family. This is one of the best books Ive read this year.With echoes of the Lost Boys in Nancy Farmers The House of the Scorpion and even Slumdog Millionaire, this a tightly woven tale of a boys will to survive, the power of story and the bond of friends tied together in the hope of a better day.