Category: General

It’s been six years since terrible stories of the abuse of young boys in state care in Australia during the ’50s and ’60s officially came to light. Stories of boys as young as six being raped by the men meant to supervise them. Of boys being locked in cages, being beaten with straps until they bled. Boys punched, having bones broken and arms wrenched from their sockets, being forced to eat their own vomit. Truly horrific stuff.

Those terrible scenes were played out in boys’ homes in other countries too, including the United States. Here, there was often a sinister racial undertone to the abuse, with boys copping the most vile treatment from the men in charge simply because of the colour of their skin. And that’s the story author Colson Whitehead tells in his new novel, The Nickel Boys.