Nowhere Boy

Katherine Marsh's Nowhere Boy is a moving friendship story for 11 year olds about two boys who are both a very long way from home.

What happens

Ahmed is fourteen and from Aleppo in Syria. When we first meet him he's in a sinking dinghy between Turkey and Greece, with his father swimming out in front to pull the boat along. By the end of that first chapter, his father is gone.

Max is American, from Washington, and he's just arrived in Brussels for a year because of his dad's job. He struggled at school back home, and now his parents have signed him up for a French-speaking school. Worse, they're making him repeat sixth grade. He's lonely, homesick and furious about all of it.

Ahmed ends up in Brussels too, on his own, sleeping in a tent camp in a city park. When the camp is due to close, he has to choose between handing himself over to the authorities or trying to reach England alone. Somehow these two boys' lives are going to cross.

The chapters swap between them, and it's a clever pairing. Max's problems are very ordinary (a leaking fountain pen, a football in the face on day one, classmates whose only English is "Coca-Cola"). Ahmed's are life and death. Seeing them side by side makes you feel both, without ever sneering at Max.

This one needs a proper heads-up. It opens with a drowning, and Ahmed's mother, sisters and grandfather have died before the story begins. There are smugglers, a forged passport and a very real fear of being sent back. The opening isn't graphic, but it is heavy, and it belongs at the very top end of this shelf.

For a reader who is sensitive to loss, especially losing a parent, it may be too much for now. For an older reader who's ready for a big, real-world story, and who wants to understand what's behind the news, it's gripping. Max's battles with French (and his dad's one essential French phrase) bring plenty of lighter moments too.

What to read next

If they're ready for more from Katherine Marsh, try The Lost Year. Thirteen-year-old Matthew is stuck at home in the pandemic with his hundred-year-old great-grandmother, until an old photo opens up a family story from Ukraine in 1932.