The Illegal
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Average rating3.4
Keita Ali is on the run. He is desperate to flee Zantoroland, a mountainous black island that produces the fastest marathoners in the world. Keita signs on with notorious marathon agent Anton Hamm, who provides Keita with a chance to run the Boston marathon in return for a huge cut of the winning purse. But when Keita fails to place among the top finishers, rather than being sent back to his own country, he goes into hiding in Freedom Statea wealthy nation that has elected a government bent on deporting the refugees living within its borders in the community of AfricTown. Keita can be safe only if he keeps moving and eludes Hamm and the officials who would deport him to his own country, where he will face almost certain death. This is the new underground. A place where tens of thousands of people deemed to be illegal live below the radar of the police and government officials. As Keita surfaces from time to time to earn cash prizes by running local road races, he has to assess whether the people he meets are friends or enemies: John Falconer, a gifted student intent on making a documentary about AfricTown; Ivernia Beech, an elderly woman who is at risk of being forced into an assisted living facility; Rocco Stanton, a recreational marathoner who is the Immigration Minister; Lula DiStefano, self-declared Queen of AfricTown and Madame of the community s infamous brothel; and Viola Hill, one of the only black reporters in the country, who is investigating the possibility of corruption linking the highest officials in Freedom State and Zantoroland. Keita s very existence in Freedom State is illegal. As he trains in secret, eluding capture, the stakes keep getting higher. Soon, he is running not only for his life, but his sister s life, too. Fast-moving and compelling, The Illegal is a literary thriller that addresses the fate of undocumented refugees who struggle to survive in nations that do not want them.
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This is just another Thriller.
I had really high hopes for this book. Not only do all my friends rate Hill's The Book of Negros as one of their favourite books, but it won the Canada Reads. Despite the hype though, this book was not special. Rather, a book that starts off with the potential to be deeply significant quickly changes into a shallow thriller with a ridiculous plot, unrealistic characters and an ending so preposterous I almost thought it was a satire.
The book was pitched as being relevant because of its focus on refugee issues, but it doesn't actually address those issues at all. The main character, Keita, is the son of an internationally known journalist and he's among the best marathoners in the country. Both these factors are crucial to the plot. Sorry, but most refugees aren't internationally competitive athletes with world famous fathers. His story is not the story of the modern refugee by a long shot.
Also, the use of fake countries makes the story hard to relate to. The history of why these two countries so close together in the Indian Ocean are so opposite is never explained, leaving the reader confused about why things are the way they are. I thought the fake countries would make a statement about how refugee problems are the same no matter what the context, but that didn't happen at all. Nothing about this plot is remotely relatable to actual historical refugee stories. Instead it just felt like the fake countries were a lazy tool to let the author tell his own story without connecting it to any actual country or event.
The only reason I gave it more than 1 star was because the story was fairly entertaining and very readable. It was a decent book for passing the time, like most thrillers. But I was looking for a thought-provoking book, and it failed completely on that front. All I thought at the end was “How did this win Canada Reads?”
