The Lost Boy | Autobiography: General

Aher Arop Bol

Aher Arop Bol is a boy of three or four when his uncle carries him from the bush into an Ethiopian refugee camp. It is the 1980s and they are fleeing the civil war in Sudan.

This remarkable account tracks Bol’s boyhood through one camp after another, through good times and bad, until he begins a vast journey through Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe which finally ends in South Africa some ten years later.

By the time Bol reaches Pretoria, he is in his early twenties, and for the first time finds himself without a purpose. Hoping to lift his spirits, he starts studying English at a school for refugees. He recounts his life experiences to a teacher, who suggests he writes it all down. The result is this book.