A Boy's Story: Novella

This book is a coming of age story based on true facts and set partly in time of war. It tells the story of a boy born into deepest poverty and ignorance, who gradually nourishes an ambition to overcome the time, place and conditions of his birth and over many years to defy the odds and to prepare the groundwork to embark on a major career. His early life prior to the commencement of formal schooling is described and the shortcomings, with which he hesitantly commences formal elementary schooling are outlines. His time seeking to overcome those handicaps with the support of his mother and persistent teachers is described as he completes the school successfully and gains a scholarship to attend a grammar school.Though he faces social discrimination at his new school, as well as intellectual and learning problems, he focusses on his main goal of enthusiastic learning of many branches of new knowledge and accommodating his speech to a new register. His mother dies of breast cancer during his early years at the grammar school, a blow, which takes some time for him to overcome. But eventually he gains a scholarship for university, the very first in his family and he leaves for ever the street and nescient deprivations of his early life.