May 1961
Sammy is a boy of ten; South is some six thousand miles from Port Said, where he was living with his parents, to Durban, where his Aunt Jane keeps an hotel. When Sammy’s parents are killed in an air raid during the Suez crisis, he sets out alone on this enormous journey - with no idea of its distance and with no luggage but a Coca-Cola bottle and some chocolate. This book is simply his journey, which, aided and confused by all kinds of people and their different motives towards Sammy, is conducted throughout most faithfully and completely from his ten-year-old point of view. This is what lifts the tale out of the sentimental adventure class and makes it a novel with some epic quality besides its particular and original charm. Sammy is that composition of innocence, adaptability and determination - like a small animal thrown out of its element into water, he thrashes about and swims or drifts with currents because it never occurs to him that he might drown. He is only certain that he must reach land - in his case Durban - and the aunt who will give him love, protection and everything that he needs. This makes him able to survive even a most horrible early adventure, although it toughens and alerts his view of all the people who subsequently try - for good or bad reasons - to help him on his way.
By the time he has reached Khartoum, his disappearance has become news - and he is found and lost by an American tourist and an Italian journalist, neither of whom understands in the least what he is aiming at and what he has already become. It is not until - in Central Africa - he encounters an old man, a hunter, a renegade, an eccentric, and a man whose understanding matches his experience, that Sammy can actually accept help - to continue his journey on his own and finish it his own way. When he finally reaches Durban and the aunt who has been his goal of comfort and security, he has become somebody whose requirements are both more dignified and mature, and the aunt, who would never had provided for his infantile visions of her, discovers that she is able to meet him on these new terms which contain the reality of love.
Mr. Canway has not only written an excellent story - the adventures are exciting, extraordinary, and yet credible - he has also managed to show somebody growing steadily out of experience in the way that Sammy develops the resolution and courage to continue his journey in all circumstances and never retreats from any of them into becoming more of a child; they simply serve to sharpen his instincts, increase his discriminations and heighten his nature. The author has achieved this by a kind of gentle simplicity of treatment, the effects of which are unusual and moving.