Little Bee

It would be easy for this novel about the deep consequences of a chance meeting between a Nigerian teenage girl, armed and dangerous oil goons, and a couple of vacationing British journalists to devolve into preachiness. Each character tries to escape the horror of that day (Sarah and Andrew mostly by pretending it never happened, Little Bee by smuggling herself out of the country to Britain), but the chances of Sarah and Andrew ignoring Little Bee and everything she represents drop to nil when she shows up in their neat suburban garden with nowhere else to go.
This is a story about being a refugee, about the first-world and third-world colliding, about guilt and the possibility of redemption. Chris pulls off some sort of literary voodoo by speaking first in the voice of a female teenage Nigerian, then in the voice of an (also female) British journalist, and making both voices not only absolutely believable, but impossible to stop reading. Little Bee is no pitiable two-dimensional stock orphan/refugee charity case. She's smart, clear-eyed, at times terrified, but very brave, a survivor who decides the best way to make it is to learn to speak English like the queen herself, and Sarah ends up needing her compassion and honesty as much as she needs Sarah. This book is full of fearless writing that stares down the evil all around and the sneakier evil lurking in our hearts and says that we don't have to be defined by our wounds or failures. It's an unbelievably truthful, heartfelt story.