Book details

Book description

Mende Nazer's happy childhood was cruelly cut short at the age of twelve when the Mujahidin rode into her village in the remote Nuba mountains of Sudan. They hacked down terrified villagers, raped the women and abducted the children. Mende was them. She was taken and sold to an Arab woman in Khartoum. She was stripped of her name and her freedom. For seven long years she was kept as a domestic slave, an 'abid', without any pay or a single day off. Her food was the leftover scraps and her bed was the floor of the locked-up garden shed. She endured this harsh and lonely existence without knowing whether her family was alive or dead, for seven long years. Passed on by her master, like a parcel, to a relative in London, Mende eventually managed to escape to freedom. Slave is a shocking first-person insight into the modern day slave trade. It is also a fascinating memoir of an African childhood and a moving testimony to a young girl's indomitable spirit in the face of adversity. After her escape from slavery, Mende Nazer has been granted asylum in the UK, and works to publicise the plight of modern-day slaves around the world. Damien Lewis has spent twenty years reporting from war and conflict zones around the world. In 2006 he was chosen as one of the 'nation's 20 favourite authors' in the Government's Quick Read initiative. His books have won the Index on Censorship Award, and been nominated for many others.