A continent of permanent revolution, of marauding rebels and despotic governments, yet one of love and laughter, compassion and humanity: this is the Africa of today. Nine-year-old Kimo, wide-eyed witness to its brutality, is starved out of his home village by drought. Desperate for help, he sets out for the big city of Bader in the company of his resourceful friends, the visionary Matt, pagmatic Hena and dreaming Golam. Their journey takes them through a country paralysed by the horrors of civil war, horrors which soon tighten their grip around the frail hopes of the starving foursome... Buoyed up by laughter, weighed down by tragedy and violence, My Friend Matt and Hena the Whore is an impossibly touching, quite extraordinary accomplishment from an outstanding new writer.