The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton – first published 2007
The storyline is original but the plot is a bit thin. A New York librarian called Fiona travels to Kenya to do some voluntary work on a project to improve literacy in remote villages. The books are delivered by camel every few weeks, hence the title. She gets to know the residents of one particular village – Mididima – particularly well but not all of them welcome the arrival of the library as they think it will disrupt their traditional way of life. Then a couple of books go missing and the project organisers threaten to remove the service from Mididima. Novels about mobile libraries are very rare – Ian Sansom’s series of books about Israel Armstrong, who drives a mobile library in Northern Ireland are the only other ones I have come across. 5/10
28th November 2010
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