The Bandits Amongst Us - by Joshua Torenn (Paperback)

About the Book

Teamed up with his peers, the BANDITS, Bernarnd must fight the logging-mongers. He dices with death - facing the mountain rebels, trading with the crooked merchants and eventually pleading his case with the Police.

Book Synopsis

Bernard Maneboko, was born in a village in rural Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands. He had a bright future, attended a prestigious school, and had dreams of becoming a police officer.

But his dreams were disrupted on the cold December night in 1999, when the brigands broke into his family's home and burnt it to the ground. An ethnic crisis erupted on the Island of Guadalcanal.

Both parents gone and as the only child and survivor, he had to face life on his own. But that is not all - a logging company is heading for his village without his tribe's consent.

Teamed up with his peers, the BANDITS, he must fight the logging-mongers. In doing so, he dices with death - facing the ferocious mountain rebels, trading with the crooked Chinese merchants and eventually pleading his case with the Police.

In his search for answers, he exposes an horrific past, which positions him as the next potential target in the series of murders. Bernard must get to the root of it to stop the brutal killings.

Review Quotes

From First Nations Writers Festival 2022, the inaugural book award winner Joshua Torenn of the Solomon Islands brings a landmark narrative of fiction.

Rich with ancient cultural knowledge and empathy, contemporary clashes, fast paced, and visceral, this heartbreaking story is about ethnic and economic disruption, greed, and families striving forward. Only someone imbued with a millennia of knowledge could write it.

This is the first full length novel in forty years to be published by a Solomon Islander.