“Allah doesn’t have to be fair in all his dealings down here,” is a phrase that is repeated like a refrain throughout the book. And “down here” – in post-colonial Africa – the conditions are such that no deity cares about anything, let alone justice: bloody political crises, brutal civil wars, arbitrary dictators, military coups, deceit and eloquent international organizations, and in between, helpless little people, abandoned to fear and superstition. Allah Doesn’t Have to is conceived as an imaginary account based on a child soldier’s account of his odyssey through the chaos of the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Orphaned twelve-year-old Birahima is accidentally thrown into the camps of different warlords, fighting now on one side, now on the other, and the only value in his world is survival. Shocking, yet without pathos, sometimes even spiced with humor. Highly recommended!