Young People Move Forward

This is a realistic novel focusing on the struggle of low-income teenagers to survive in the late 1990s. Twelve-year-old Ashu was forced to leave his hometown to live with relatives in the county town to save his sick mother and protect his younger sister. Between the heat of the brick kiln and the dim light of the dictionary, he grew as tenaciously as a weed. It delicately depicts the brilliance and choices of human nature under the weight of poverty, and asks whether a child soaked in suffering can use literate hands to earn a different future for himself.