Title: Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal
Author: Conor Grennan
Publisher: William Morrow
Publication Date: January 25, 2011
Hardcover: 304 pages
ISBN: 978-0061930058
Genre: Non-Fiction, History, Memoir
One Person Can Make a Difference
In search of adventure, twenty-nine-year-old Conor Grennan traded his day job for a year-long trip around the globe, a journey that began with a three-month stint volunteering at the Little Princes Children’s Home, an orphanage in war-torn Nepal.
Conor was initially reluctant to volunteer, unsure whether he had the proper skill, or enough passion, to get involved in a developing country in the middle of a civil war. But he was soon overcome by the herd of rambunctious, resilient children who would challenge and reward him in a way that he had never imagined. When Conor learned the unthinkable truth about their situation, he was stunned: The children were not orphans at all. Child traffickers were promising families in remote villages to protect their children from the civil war—for a huge fee—by taking them to safety. They would then abandon the children far from home, in the chaos of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu.
For Conor, what began as a footloose adventure becomes a commitment to reunite the children he had grown to love with their families, but this would be no small task. He would risk his life on a journey through the legendary mountains of Nepal, facing the dangers of a bloody civil war and a debilitating injury. Waiting for Conor back in Kathmandu, and hopeful he would make it out before being trapped in by snow, was the woman who would eventually become his wife and share his life’s work.
Little Princes is a true story of families and children, and what one person is capable of when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. At turns tragic, joyful, and hilarious, Little Princes is a testament to the power of faith and the ability of love to carry us beyond our wildest expectations.
My Review:
Not only did I read and enjoy Little Princes by Conor Grennan, but I also re-read it aloud to my family, went online to research the foundation Next Generation Nepal and found another passion, helping the displaced children of Nepal. While I would love to go on and on about the injustices that have been done to the families and the children, and trust me when I say there are too many unaccounted for, I am supposed to review the book Little Princes. Grennan writes about a very sad topic and in what could easily become a very depressing book, Grennan’s humour and the children’s loveable spirits shine through making the story informative, insightful, and stunningly beautiful. In the midst of a civil war, poverty and despair the reader is taken to Godawari where the Nepalese orphanage, Little Princes Children’s Home, is located. Grennan is upfront; he only agreed to volunteer there for three months before touring the world because it sounded less selfish than stating he was taking a year off to tour the world. Little did he know just how much these 18 children would mean to him, how they would work their way into his heart, and how he would be unable to get the injustice of human trafficking out of his mind. Little Princes is an astonishingly brilliant, straightforward, and brutally honest account of what occurred beginning in November of 2004 and how 18 children, volunteers, and events more dreadful than one could imagine, lead to the building of a foundation which is still going to this day (I will include links and hope everyone at least takes a look). I applaud Grennan for his honesty, his detailed and vivid descriptions of life in Godawari, Nepal, and for sharing with the world what has been going on for decades and needs to be stopped. If I could, I would place a copy of Little Princes into the hands of every reader. It is a book not to be missed.
Conor Grennan, author of the memoir Little Princes, spent eight years at the EastWest Institute (EWI), both in Prague and the EU Office in Brussels, where he served as Deputy Director for the Security and Governance Program.
At the East/West Institute, Conor developed and managed a wide variety of projects focusing on issues such as peace and reconciliation in the Balkans, community development in Central Eastern Europe, and harmonizing anti-trafficking policy at the highest levels government in the European Union and the former Yugoslavia.
Conor left EWI in 2004 to travel the world and volunteer in Nepal. He would eventually return to Nepal and found Next Generation Nepal, an organization dedicated to reconnecting trafficked children with their families and combating the root causes of child trafficking in rural villages in Nepal. He was based in the capital of Kathmandu until September 2007 where he was the Executive Director of Next Generation Nepal.
Conor now serves on the Board of Next Generation Nepal, together with his wife, Liz. He is a 2010 graduate of the NYU Stern School of Business, where he was the President of the Student Body. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and son, Finn, and a soon-to-be baby girl.
To learn more about Next Generation Nepal please visit the website.
I received a complimentary ARC copy of Little Princes by Conor Grennan from Shelf Awareness/William Morrow to review. Receiving a copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned novel.
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