The Small OnesThe Small Ones

Clay, Amir and Mehdi, and a girl, Layla, who are caught up in a militia-led insurgence along the Iran-Iraq border and forced to become child soldiers. They create a little family of their own even as they yearn to escape and return to their lost homes and some kind of safety. Where Aria was a story about mothers and daughters, The Small Ones is about fathers and sons--in particular, unreliable father-figures in the wartime Iran of Hozar's telling, powerful men whose personal violence leads to pain and bloodshed in the world. It is also a tale about surviving such wars, although not without sacrifice. The story centres on two of the boys, narrator Amir and his best friend Clay, tracing a journey where one of the pair eventually finds escape and freedom, but only at a terrible cost to the other.