Mende Nazer and Damien Lewis: Slave: The true story of a girl's lost childhood

Slave: The true story of a girl's lost childhood and her fight for survival. Reviewed by MARGIE THOMSON.

What were you doing at the change of the millennium? That's how current this shocking story is: any reader will be able to reference the years and moments of Mende Nazer's capture and slavery with milestones in their own life, all of which brings home the terrible truth, that the slavery of Black Africans is not only historical, but a thriving industry today.

The poignant first chapters of this gripping book recreate Mende's childhood in a village in the Nuba mountains in South Sudan, where she lived in a close-knit community whose lifestyle was still primitive, except for the fact that once she turned 8, Mende got dressed and walked an hour to school. Circumstances and her obvious high intelligence combined to form an ambition to train as a doctor, so that she could help her village.

It was not to be, however. One night, Arab militia bribed and armed by Arab slave traders from the powerful north of the country raided the village, incinerating huts, slaughtering adults and kidnapping the children, 12-year-old Mende among them. A hellish journey involving excruciating rape by her captors (as a child she had undergone the most severe form of circumcision, infibulation), and brief detention at a Sudanese Government army camp, ended with her being sold to an Arab mistress in Khartoum.

There she was kept for around eight years, locked in a tiny shed at night with no blankets or protection from mosquitoes, beaten on the slightest pretence, working without break or pay or any recognition as a human (called the insulting "yebit", meaning "girl worthy of no name") and denied any interaction other than with the family she worked for.

The book, completed over three months of intensive interviews between Mende and her journalist champion, Damien Lewis, is more than just a catalogue of physical abuse, although it is, inevitably, that. Thanks to the extraordinary intelligence and insight of Mende, it's also an acute portrayal of how slavery works through terror and humiliation to degrade a mind, to destroy a person's will and belief in themselves.

While Mende finally escaped after more than 10 years of slavery, thanks to an opportunity provided by her transferral to London as a gift to her "owner's" sister, her case became a celebrated one, and it was in the context of her public campaign for amnesty (initially rejected by the British Government) that this book was written.

Mende does not forget that, while for the two years since her escape she has been accustoming herself to the joys, terrors and strangeness of freedom, many others (thousands, human rights organisation say), remain enslaved.


* Virago, $37