Children of the Stone City

During the gloomiest days of South African apartheid, one of the best and most widely read novels for young people on the struggle there was Beverley Naidoo’s Journey to Jo’Burg. Decades later, Naidoo is back with a young reader’s novel set in another apartheid society: Israel-Palestine.

The book is allegorical and never mentions Palestine or Israel. Instead, Children of the Stone City describes the privileged lives of the “Permitteds” and their subjugation of the “Nons,” who live in Stone City. The youngsters at the heart of the story, Adam and Leila, have to maneuver through the alleys of Stone City, avoiding Permitted police as well as Permitted youngsters, who lord their privilege and power over Nons in numerous ways. As stark as the inequality is, this is not a tale of unrelieved oppression. Adam and Leila are musicians, and their family and larger community are sites of warmth and camaraderie. Together, they keep alive memories of the Time Before. Adam’s father, an archeologist, had given him a book of folktales, and inscribed: “Like bits of pottery we find in the earth, they tell us something about the people who made them.” And when Adam’s best friend, Zak, is arrested by Permitted police on trumped up attempted murder charges, the Permitted human rights lawyer, Lily Roth, shows that there can be solidarity between Permitteds and Nons.

Without the mention of Palestine, Beverley Naidoo introduces young readers to Palestinian social reality, and the song of defiance that resonates from the Time Before until today. [Description from Bill Bigelow.]

ISBN: 9780063096967 | Quill Tree Books