Chronicler of the Winds

On the rooftop of a theater in an African port, a ten-year-old boy lies slowly dying of bullet wounds. He is Nelio, a leader of street kids, rumored to be a healer and a prophet, and possessed of a strangely ancient wisdom. One of the millions of poor people "forced to eat life raw," Nelio tells his unforgettable story over the course of nine nights. After bandits cruelly raze his village, he manages to flee and makes his way toward the city, where he joins the legions of abandoned children living in the streets. An act of the imagination, an effort to prove to his comrades that life must be more than mere survival and defy the power of their circumstances to define them, cuts short Nelio's life.