My name is Samim by Fidan Meikle is an inspiring fiction book that portrays the life of Samim, a thirteen-year-old refugee from Afghanistan who loves chess, now living in the UK. The story is divided into two parts, one in which Samim talks about escaping from Afghanistan, and the second one in which Samim talks about his life in the UK. I personally think this is a rather great idea, as you’re always excited to find out what comes in the second part. I adored the way Samim’s talking about his great escape was put into the book, because it’s not randomly put there. It’s done in the form of an interview, after which people will decide whether to grant asylum to Samim.
The only issue I had with this book is all the chess details. Games are started when the coach whistles for some reason, they don’t shake hands before a game, the Queen’s Gambit is an aggressive opening out of nowhere, pieces are called by the wrong names, two players getting a 6/6 score without ever playing each other and so much more. I have no idea why the author didn’t give the book to read to a chess player to spot these mistakes, because half the chess stuff was nonsense. Another bad thing is that Samim gets to calm himself down by counting pi. This isn’t wrong by itself, but in the book it’s just overused. After seeing 3.14159265358… for like the hundredth time I genuinely started to get annoyed by it.
I’d say that the book was excellent, it just needs a bit of polishing to make it even better. But if you’re not a chess player and you decide to ignore these details, it will be an amazing book to read. I’d recommend it to children around Samim’s age, which is 13.
Jonáš Zeman, 12
