Children of AIDS: Africa's Orphan Crisis

Rating:
Summary: One of the most moving books I've read for years
Review: Occasionally in the past I've read newspaper articles reporting that there are African countries where one person in four is HIV positive, or where a third of the population is expected to die of AIDS. Somehow, these extraordinary numbers never quite seemed real to me. Until I read this book.

Children of Aids is just a collection of stories, but they are all true, and they are more moving than any fiction I've read for years. There's the Kenyan girl who sells her virginity for an apple, because no one has ever given her a present. There's an extraordinary 17 year old whose parents died of AIDS and who is now left raising her brothers in a dusty South African township. And there's a Zambian grandmother who's lost five out of eight of her children to what she believes is witchcraft.

Guest has taken the trouble to listen to a lot of people's stories, and she recounts them with warmth, sympathy and a page-turning narrative style. Her great achievement is to take a global calamity and show what it means for ordinary individuals.