THE INSPIRED
A Ugandan farm boy who is laughed at and held back a year in the big city must find his way, with one loyal friend and his mother's stubborn faith, from the bottom of the class to the top of the nation.
About this book
The Inspired
A boy from the village. A school that laughed. A friend who stayed.
About the Book
Kevin is six years old when he first wonders whether the command to work six days a week applies to children. By seven, he is standing in a classroom in Kampala, where forty pupils laugh at the way he says his own name.
Raised in the village of Mugiti, Kevin has grown up on groundnuts, early mornings and his mother’s unshakable faith. When his father, a science teacher in the city, brings him to Kampala Parents Primary School, Kevin finds that the dream he has carried for years comes with a hard first lesson. He is put back a class, and he cannot speak the language everyone else speaks so easily. He eats his lunch alone under a mango tree and learns how quickly confidence can drain away.
Then a small, serious boy named Erasmus sits down beside him. With ten new words a day and a great deal of patience, Erasmus begins to teach him that English is not a prize for a lucky few but a house anyone can enter. Together they start a reading club, a football team and a science club, and the friendship that grows between them becomes the heart of the story.
But Kevin’s mother, Faith, arrives one day to discover a truth she was never told, and her decision sends him back to the village, to a school he thought he had outgrown and a friend he may never see again.
What follows is a story of homecoming and hard work. Kevin founds a library from a tobacco tin of savings, organises a village football tournament, picks up a guitar and sings hymns at weddings and funerals. He struggles with mathematics, stands up to jealous classmates, and slowly discovers what he is capable of. A national spelling competition and a long-delayed reunion bring the story to its moving close.