STORIA DI IQBAL (IQBAL’S STORY)

Book ID/图书代码： 04283006B02962

English Summary/英文概要： The novel tells the real story of Iqbal Masih, the child from Pakistan that has become the symbol of the fight against the child labour. As millions of others kids, in Pakistan and in the poorest countries of the world, Iqbal is sold by his family of peasants living in poverty in exchange for a loan of 16 $. Iqbal must work in a carpet factory as a slave, enchained to the loom, 12 hours a day, with a daily salary of one rupee until the debt is cancelled (which is impossible). Iqbal gets in touch with the Liberation front against the child labour and find the courage to rebel and to escape. He therefore becomes an activist of this organisation and helps many others little slaves in escaping. The international press notices him too: in December 1994 he wins the "Reebock Youth in Action Prize", in Boston and a scholarship to study as a lawyer. Then he decides to go back to Pakistan and to go on with his fight. On Easter day of 1995, when he is 13, Iqbal is killed by the carpet Mafia while he was riding his bicycle, during his holidays at home. This crime is of course still unpunished. Storia di Iqbal is told by Fatima, a little girl who has shared with Iqbal the experience of slavery and fight, before migrating with her brothers to Italy where she will live in another, different condition of servitude. The novel, indignant and moved, is a denunciation, in the name of liberty, of kites and of memory that has to be kept, no matter the price, because without memory there is no hope for the future. A novel that does not necessarily give answers. Perhaps it would be presumptuous as an author to expect the answers. But Storia di Iqbal can indeed raise questions. There is one question in particular that I would like to underline: there are hundreds of thousands of new slaves that live all over the world - and that live among us too - it is only question of "seeing" them. Are they an heritage of the past or, rather, the product of a society that has the profit as her first and most important value? The slave kids that work in condition which are not human, in the plantations, in the mines, in the carpets factories, in the snickers factories or in the soccer balls factories, the kids which are daily violated by the prosperous “industry” of sex or holidays, the meninos da rua in Brazil or the kids that survive in the sewers of Bucharest, are only a small and temporary “accident” on the road to prosperity? Storia di Iqbal is a novel of civil engagement, a term which is not so fashionable nowadays, but maybe that should be revaluated again. Isn’t it this too the duty of the novelist? Telling small, terrible, banal everyday stories, telling them to the youngest and ask questions that maybe will find no answer.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 這是真實故事，一個巴基斯坦小英雄的故事，結局雖然悲傷但另人想敬佩小男孩的勇氣。
美國是S&S出版

Awards/获奖情况：An ALA notable Book 2004
International Reading Association Award (Theacher’s choice) 2004

50.000 copies sold in Italy and still selling, very well known by teachers and libraries. It sells well everywhere
* 版權售出國家：
Hachette (French), Simon and Schuster (US and GB), Grupo Editorial SM (Castillan), Editorial Cruilla (Catalan), Zanzibar Uitgeverij Kidgids (Dutch), Peter Hammer Verlag (German), Suzuki Pub. (Japanese), Joong Ang (Korean), Aizkorri (Basque), Patakis (Greek), Arvids (Danish), Nokhook Publishing (Thailand)

About the Author/作者介绍： Francesco D’Adamo was born in 1949 and lives in Milan. In the early ‘90 he has been of the first writers that followed the Italian noir genre (Noir italiano, an anthology published by Mondadori in 1991 and Overdose, a novel published by Mondadori in 1992). He also edited together with Rosaria Guacci, the anthology of detective stories entitled Nero di seppia (Gambero Rosso Editore, 1995): a collection of the best Italian detective stories about crimes committed with an unusual gastronomic background. D’Adamo began writing for young adults with the novel Lupo Omega (Edizioni EL, 1999) that was selected at three important Italian prizes. D’Adamo also published another novel entitled Mille pezzi al giorno (Edizioni EL, 2000, selected at the Lunigiana Prize) and Storia di Iqbal (Edizioni EL, 2001).
作者的話：
I have started writing for young adults naturally, I did not planned it before: I have just felt I wanted to write for them. It seems often that adolescents are the main focus only when it comes to the consumption matter. Otherwise they are absolutely marginal. Their passions - violent and "black"- are on the newspapers only when dramatic events occur. It seems that all the rest is lost and frayed. And what is worse is that they are losing the memory of themselves and of the people that came before them. This is why I wanted to tell stories about the urban suburbs, stories about the "Big Nothing", with mobs, cruel and sweet at the time, as in Lupo Omega or in Mille pezzi al giorno. Then Iqbal came, a poster stuck on a wall and the memory of a story read on the newspaper, some years ago, and then forgotten, as many other stories, because the sad stories are too many nowadays and too sad. I had to tell it. The distance between the suburb of Milan and the suburb of Lahore is huge: but the need of ransom and liberty, can be very close. At least this is my hope.

Format:TRADE PAPERBACK

Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：不确定

Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE(到期可授)

Sales in other countries/其他国家销售情况：

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