Child’s Play is a psychological sex-crime thriller from Kia Abdullah, an author known for subverting expectations
BY JOBINA BARDAI | OCT 21, 2009
Abdullah’s second novel is a controversial, violent and deeply sexual story that shatters the delicate sensibilities that seem to govern output from British-Asian writers.
It follows the story of 25-year-old Allegra Ashe who, after a chance encounter with an alluring stranger, is recruited into ‘Vokoban’; a covert government unit that uses a mysterious new law to chase and convict paedophiles. Allegra becomes deeply involved with the unit and begins her descent into the darkness and depravity of the human mind. As her life spirals out of control, we find ourselves voyeurs in a twisted world of lust, danger, deceit and revenge. With several recent high-profile cases of sexual abuse and paedophilia, Child’s Play taps into a subject that repulses and fascinates in equal measures. It places a telescope into the darkest recesses of the human mind and invites the reader to take a look.
