I have never been to Cairo but having read The Glass Collector I feel as though I was part of a world teeming with life, colour, smells and sounds so foreign and fascinating from my Melbourne world that I was actually there.

The main character, Aaron, lives in a ghetto of garbage collectors (the Zabbaleen) who clean up the majority of Cairo’s rubbish and recycle what they can to eke out a paltry existence. Their lives are threatened daily with disease, injury and poverty and yet their community is strong with faith, laws and traditions. As with any society they have their hopes, desires and conflicts and Aaron has similar characteristics of teenagers everywhere: he can be self-centred, contradictory and wayward but at the same time empathetic and loyal. He can also love a girl, that timeless, worrying and confounding emotion.

The grim setting for The Glass Collector is very confrontational and Aaron’s circumstances are dire but his strength of character and ultimately the bond of the extended Zabbaleen family prove that hope can shine through even in the darkest of situations.

Perera has written a unique story, based on the reality that is the Zabbaleen, that highlights their world with humanity and respect and all you want is for Aaron to have something go his way, for his dreams to become a possibility.

12 and up.