Summary

Chapter 7 continues the pattern in which odd-numbered chapters are titled “The Children” and narrated in their first-person collective point of view. The chapter begins with the children expressing their grief at the deaths that occurred during the massacre, then transitions back to the story of “the Four’s imprisonment” (192), referring to the long legal battle to free Bongo, Lusaka, Woja Beki, and Konga. The children describe how the trial of the Four became an international news story and ultimately a standoff between Pexton, the government leader (referred to throughout the novel as “His Excellency”), and other world governments.

As the children have aged and become sexually mature, some of the girls have gotten married, some of the boys have started pursuing other interests, and thus the collective “we” of the narrator, which in earlier chapters represented all of the village’s children who...