In the Sea There are Crocodiles

Italian novelist Fabio Geda’s biographical fiction, In the Sea There are Crocodiles (2010), is based on the true story of Enaiat Akbari. An international bestseller, it has been translated into more than two dozen languages. Born in Turin, Geda has a background working with children dealing with difficult situations. He teaches writing at Scuola Holden, the most famous school of storytelling in Italy. His writing frequently appears in Italian periodicals. In the Sea There are Crocodiles was the first of his books to be translated into English.

Ten-year-old Enaiat Akbari is a refugee from Afghanistan. He meets Fabio Geda at one of the author’s appearances; Geda is promoting a book that tells the story of a Romanian boy and his experiences as an immigrant living in Italy. Enaiat tells Fabio his own story of experiencing similar things in his own life. Fabio is fascinated with Enaiat’s story, leading him to write a novel based on the boy’s stories. BookBrowse cites an interview in which Fabio recalls the encounter that prompted him to start the project. “The association that invited me to present the book had also invited a boy who really did travel alone for a long time. In this way, the real story of the boy could play as a sort of countermelody to the fictional story I had written. That boy was Enaiat. That evening while I was listening to him telling his story—a story so dramatic, so painful—I discovered that he was able to tell it with an incredible lightness, a surprising irony. So I thought it would be nice to put the same lightness, the same irony, in the pages of a book.” This use of an unexpectedly upbeat tone interspersed with the seriousness of Enaiat’s experience gives the book a unique perspective on the theme of survival.

One evening, when Enaiat’s mother is putting him to bed for the night, she gives him three pieces of advice to live by. She tells him not to get involved with using drugs. She then warns him against the use of weapons. Finally, she tells him that he should not steal. When he awakens the next morning, Enaiat finds that his mother has disappeared and left him behind. They had fled the village in which they lived in Ghazni in search of safety beyond Afghanistan, but his mother has experienced a change of heart and returns home to her younger children. Enaiat is left alone in Pakistan to take care of himself. Underlying her action is her desire that Enaiat somehow be able to find a better life than she and their homeland can provide for him.



Enaiat begins a journey that takes him on an expansive trek to Iran, Turkey, Greece, and ultimately to Italy where he is granted political asylum. His journey includes working long, hard hours for very low pay and survival while living in the most difficult of conditions. As he makes his way from country to country, he has no choice but to trust strangers who deal with the trafficking of people. He faces this at each leg of the trip when it is necessary for him to cross the border of one country into another. At one point along the way, he lives in the dark bottom of a truck without much water for days on end. He hikes across mountains for almost a month and sees other young boys die as he pushes on.

Enaiat’s persistence in the face of the overwhelming odds against him turns the journey into a survival of the fittest test where only the strongest reach safety. The pervasive deaths among the children facing the same situation as Enaiat make it all the more remarkable that he is able to make it all the way to Italy from Afghanistan. At times, the narrative includes the conversations that took place between Enaiat and Geda. While they interrupt the flow of the book, the conversations also add to the authenticity of the work. As they worked on the book, there were times when Fabio helped the boy to recall his experiences by using maps and other sources. The journey covers a five-year period; Enaiat is fifteen years old when he finally arrives in Italy. A series of serendipitous events brought the boy to Italy where he was helped by an Italian family and to his meeting with Fabio.

Kirkus Reviews said of the book, “One marvels that Enaiat has told his life adventure to Italian author Geda, and while the novelist has evidently shaped Enaiat’s story for publication, at its core is an authentic, open and marvelous voice of youthful exuberance.”