Sam
Samuel Ali is an aspiring writer who spent his early life as an adventuring farmyard animal, owned and lovingly cared for by the English author-farmer, Dick-King Smith. Since leaving farm-life, Samuel took to posturing, quite ineffectively, until stumbling into early Edwardian England as a disturbed but harmless young man and was befriended by a gentleman named EM Forster. Not wishing to be a burden, he eventually said goodbye to his new friend and now resides with much reluctance, and denial, in reality.
Why do so many of us remain indifferent when a bloodied face pops up bearing witness to our society’s vicious inequalities? This is the first question that always strikes me whenever I read a work like Piri Thomas’ 1967 novel, Down These Mean Streets, about the author’s ghetto youth in Spanish Harlem. The answer is not far off. It can be found in the book and it lies within me.
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How do we give a voice to those on the margins? We must, first, find their voice – for every human has a voice. We can wander into their world, into shops or up into high-rise flats, to listen out for conversation. Yet, what if we are talking of the furthest margins - those who are so isolated and harried as to barely have conversation?
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The Book of Sand (1975) was written by an aged and blind Jorge Luis Borges, approaching the end of his grand literary career. Having risen to international renown by, in particular, popularising the literary form of “magical realism,” in The Book of Sand he resolutely pursues a fantastical, albeit melancholic, style.
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