Bingo's Run

Meet Bingo, the greatest drug runner in the slums of Kibera, Nairobi, and maybe the world. A teenage “growth-retard,” as he calls himself, often mistaken for a younger boy, he faithfully serves Wolf, the drug lord of Kibera. Bingo spends his days throwing rocks at Krazi Hari, the prophet of Kibera’s garbage mound, “lipping” safari tourists of their cash and hanging out with his best friend, Slo-George, a taciturn fellow whose girth is a mystery to Bingo in a place where there is never enough food. Bingo earns his keep by running “white” to a host of clients, including Thomas Hunsa, a reclusive artist whose paintings, rooted in African tradition, move him. But when Bingo witnesses a drug-related murder and Wolf sends him to an orphanage for “protection,” Bingo’s life changes and he learns that life itself is the “run.”

A modern trickster tale that draws on traditional African legends, Bingo’s Run is a wildly original, often very funny, and always moving story of a boy alone in a corrupt and dangerous world who must depend on his wits and inner resources to survive. In it, James A. Levine has created a glimpse into an African underworld rarely described in fiction. Bingo’s Run is a piercingly beautiful story of redemption and the remarkable power of art to transform lives.

Born and educated in England, James A. Levine is a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic who has worked with impoverished children in the United States and internationally for more than thirty years. He has won more than fifty major awards in science, consulted to numerous governments, and lectures to humanitarian groups around the world. He is the author of the novel The Blue Notebook.