Aher Arop Bol is a 25-year-old law student from Southern Sudan who lives in the South African capital, Pretoria. His memoir, The Lost Boy, published by Kwela Books), tells the remarkable story of his life from the age of 3 when his uncle carried him from a battlefield into a refugee camp in Ethiopia.
Two years later, his uncle was enlisted by the Sudanese People's Liberation Army and Aher was left to live with thousands of other orphans in a series of camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. In his teens, on his own, he made the 2000 mile journey to South Africa, without a passport, defying bandits and hunger, until he eventually reached Pretoria where he now runs a tuck shop at a railway station.
