Oranges in No Man’s Land

I find that so may writers seem to have a compulsion to write long, complex, layered work. So many new books are thick paperbacks, full of things happening on every page.

Oranges in No Man’s Land is not like that. Not at all.

Elizabeth Laird manages to write a beautiful, heart-warming story in the course of just about a hundred pages of large print. The setting and characters are just so powerful that the story becomes not a book, but a moment in time. It’s an eternal, timeless moment, captured by language.

I know nothing about the history of Lebanon. I know nothing about the ‘Green Line’ or what that meant, but I agree with the critic who says that Laird’s Oranges in No Man’s Land is ‘A tribute to the human spirit’.

Ten-year-old Ayesha lives in Beirut, ravaged by civil war. Between the two parts of the city is no man’s land, and only military men dare go there. But Ayesha’s grandmother is sick and the doctor is on the other side of the line. Ayesha must go and fetch the doctor. It is dangerous and she knows that she may not make it back alive, but she has to try.

Oranges in No Man’s Land made my heart leap to my throat and stay there until I had turned the last page.