The Boy & the Old Man: Three Years in Somalia

So who is Omar Eby? A retired English professor (tenderhearted and cynical) who looks with affection and severity upon the young man he once was in Somalia. Eby’s first chapter “Learning My Name” quickly and playfully sets the tone for this fascinating memoir, The Boy and the Old Man. Identifying with one Omar after another, Eby skips from a Taliban terrorist and a four-star general to a translator of Somali tales and an Old Testament duke; then recalls an English student in Mogadiscio and ...