#BlogTour Into the Mouth of the Lion by A.B. Kyazze

 

It's a pleasure to take part in the BlogTour Into the Mouth of the Lion by A.B. Kyazze.

About the Author

A.B. Kyazze is a British-American writer and photographer. She spent more than 18 years writing and taking photographs in humanitarian crises across the globe in Africa, Asia and the Balkans. Into the Mouth of the Lion is her debut novel. She recently published short stories in The Great Lakes Review, Byte the Book and The National Anthology of Flash Fiction 2019 (UK). She also writes book reviews and articles and teaches creative writing classes for children. Follow @abkwriting on Twitter

About the book

Angola, 2002. In the last days of a vicious civil war, it is a dangerous landscape rife with rebel soldiers, land mines, corruption and deception. A suspicious explosion kills a beloved nurse, while another humanitarian worker goes missing.

Lena Rodrigues, a young photographer, flies out to Angola's highlands to piece together the reasons behind her sister's disappearance. But will she have the strength to bear witness to the truth, before she gets entangled in the country's conflict for minerals and power?

Review

Lena, in all of her privileged naiveté, doesn't really have any idea what she has let herself in for by flying halfway across the globe to look for her sister in Angola. To the team on the ground, DJ's team, she is a liability for exactly that reason. 

DJ is more of a fleeting image or a mirage in the book. Now and again the reader gets a short chapter or paragraph of her emotional state of mind and where she is headed, but no idea when that happened and if she is still safe. The death of her friend has caused a breakdown in communication - her grief has made her an uncontrollable variable.

Kyazze creates this fictional story around the factual events of the brutal Angolan Civil war or the tail-end of the unrest. The more personal fractious relationship between two sisters is indicative of the many stories that go unheard in war zones, especially ones driven with such brutality and frenzy of opposing forces.

Kudos to the author for the way she approached the character of DJ and the way she takes part in the story. The dipping in, the almost lyrical moments that are anonymous in a sense that the reader knows but there is a lack of direct reference to whom the scenes refer. It creates this beauty and fragile moments in the midst of the reality of what is taking place with Lena and the team.

Definitely a book I would recommend, certainly an author I would like to read more by.

Buy Into the Mouth of the Lion at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher ‏: ‎ Unbound Digital pub date 6 May 2021. Buy at Amazon com.