The Oprah Book Club

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If you’re following Oprah’s latest book club pick, Say You’re One of Them, you might be wondering if it’s available on Oprah’s favorite gadget, the Amazon Kindle. It is, and it’s only $6.99 on the best selling electronic book reader around. It’s only $299 at Amazon and it’s available today. Click on one of the banners on the right side and pick it up today along with the book and it’ll arrive preloaded for your enjoyment. Thanks

In the past week, Oprah has picked out, “Say You’re One of Them” as her newest book club pick. It’s an African tale of stories told by Uwem Akpan. If you haven’t picked it up, you can today. Check out the lowest price on the net today over at Amazon.

From the publisher:In 2005, Uwem Akpan’s first short story, “An Ex-Mas Feast,” was published in The New Yorker’s Debut Fiction Issue, signaling the arrival of a breathtakingly talented writer.

Through the sanitized windows of our televisions and newspapers, the truth about the pervasive poverty and violence that exists in so many African nations comes only in fits and starts, clouded by physical distance and apathy toward what we may feel we cannot relate to or change. In his first collection of stories, Say You’re One of Them, Akpan brings to life the issues facing children in one of the most beleaguered places on earth, so that their voices will no longer go unheard.

In five separate narratives, each told from the perspective of a child from a different African country, Say You’re One of Them vividly portrays the horror and beauty to be found in both the history-altering events and the mundane details of everyday life. In these stories of family, friendship, betrayal and redemption, Akpan highlights the tenacity and perseverance of his young protagonists.

The 8-year-old narrator of “An Ex-Mas Feast” needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his 12-year-old sister takes to the streets to raise these meager funds, his dream can’t be realized. Food comes first. His family lives in a street shanty in Nairobi, Kenya, but their ways of loving and taking advantage of each other strike a universal chord. In the second of his stories originally published in The New Yorker, “My Parents’ Bedroom,” Akpan takes us far beyond what we thought we knew about the tribal conflict in Rwanda. The story is told by a young girl, who, with her little brother, witnesses the worst possible scenario between parents. This singular collection will also take the reader inside Nigeria, Benin and Ethiopia, revealing in beautiful prose the harsh realities of life in Africa for children.

Akpan’s voice is a literary miracle, rendering lives of almost unimaginable deprivation and terror into stories that are nothing short of transcendent.

Pick it up today.