Boy Overboard

Boy Overboard, a 2002 middle grade novel by Morris Gleitzman, is a coming-of-age story that opens in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. After the bombing of their home by the country’s “morality police,” 11-year-old Jamal and his family embark on a perilous ocean crossing to Australia, braving storms, pirates, and other threats. Inspired by true events, Gleitzman’s novel tackles themes of innocence, intolerance, resilience, and idealism. Winner of a 2010 KOALA Children’s Choice Award, Boy Overboard was adapted into a successful stage play by Patricia Cornelius in 2007. Gleitzman has published over three dozen novels, including the multi-volume Once series, which includes the novels Once, Then, and After. 

This guide refers to the 2002 Penguin paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, child death, child abuse, racism, and gender discrimination. 

Plot Summary

Eleven-year-old Jamal lives with his parents and nine-year-old sister, Bibi, in a small village in Afghanistan. For the past five years, the country has been harshly ruled by the Taliban, an extreme Islamicist regime that has banned almost all forms of recreation and most aspects of Westernized culture. The Taliban’s interpretation of religious Sharia law is particularly restrictive of women’s rights, forbidding girls and women from being educated or even going outside without covering their faces and bodies. Jamal’s parents have been defying the law by teaching girls in a secret school run out of their home. Additionally, the family belongs to an unspecified ethnic minority that’s discriminated against by the government and others. Jamal and Bibi are devoted fans of soccer, which they watch on a neighbor’s illegal satellite hookup. Whenever they can, Jamal and his friends play pickup soccer in the desert near their village, keeping an eye out for the Taliban enforcers and trying to avoid the burned-out tanks, trucks, minefields, and other remnants of the country’s ongoing armed conflicts. Bibi, a gifted soccer player, insists on joining their games, worrying Jamal, who knows that if Bibi gets caught, she could get the whole family in trouble.

One night, Jamal’s parents tell him and Bibi that the government has found out about their secret school and that they must flee. Taking only what they can carry, including a jeweled candlestick that has been in the family for hundreds of years, they take refuge in a neighbor’s house. Determined to restore his family’s home, Jamal plans to become a soccer star, which might endear his family to the nation and soften the persecution of their ethnic group—and maybe even topple the Taliban. However, the next evening, after Mum and Dad have gone off to warn their students of the government crackdown on their school, their house is blown up by the Taliban. Soon after, Dad returns in his taxi without Mum. He says that they must go to the city to find her.

In the city, Dad leaves Jamal and Bibi alone in an abandoned shop, saying that he’s going to look for Mum in the nearby soccer stadium. Thinking that their parents are trying to get them onto a soccer team, Jamal and Bibi sneak into the stadium. However, the stadium is now being used for public executions, and as Jamal and Bibi watch in horror, their mother is dragged onto the field, along with several other women, to be shot for teaching. Suddenly, Dad drives into the stadium in his taxi, throwing burning cans of oil at the Taliban gunmen. Mum jumps into the taxi, and they narrowly escape. When the family is reunited, Dad tells them that they must flee the country. They are going to Australia, a big country with many freedoms and opportunities. Dad sells his taxi to have the family smuggled across the border to a refugee camp.

While practicing soccer in the camp, Jamal meets a “gloomy-looking” boy about his own age, who tries to steal his soccer ball. When Jamal returns to his family’s tent, he is frightened to see his father surrounded by policemen. He is bribing them to arrange the family’s travel to Australia. The family boards a plane for the first leg of the journey, and when the metal detector at check-in doesn’t go off, Jamal realizes that his parents have sold their precious candlestick to pay for the trip. This gives him a feeling of terrible foreboding since the ancient heirloom was a talisman of luck and ancestral protection.

After disembarking the plane, they wait on a dock to board one of two rickety fishing boats bound for Australia. Also waiting is the gloomy-looking boy from the refugee camp, Omar, and they fight over Jamal’s soccer ball, which falls into the water. While trying to recover it, all three of the children fall overboard. They are rescued by a sailor, but the accident separates them from their parents, who are swept by the crowd onto one of the boats, which casts off, leaving Jamal and Bibi behind. The two siblings and Omar must board the remaining boat. However, Jamal has managed to save his soccer ball.

On the second day of the journey, Jamal saves a teenage girl, Rashida, from being burned after her blanket catches fire from a cook stove. He is shocked by her revealing clothes, eye makeup, and green lipstick. With no parents to protect them, the four young people must rely on each other. First, the people smugglers who captain the vessel demand an extra $100 from each passenger, stripping the refugees of most of their valuables. They are raided by pirates, prearranged by the smugglers. After abducting all the unaccompanied girls they can find, the pirates and smugglers abandon the others to drift helplessly, without food, water, or a navigator. A sea storm hits the boat, flooding it, and the passengers must bail water for hours, fighting a losing battle with the rising water. They are rescued by an Australian warship, which brings the starving refugees to a small port, where there are tents, beds, and food waiting for them. Andrew, a kindly naval officer, tells Jamal that the Australian Navy will keep searching for his parents’ boat.

Convinced that he’s in Australia now, Jamal wants to explore, but Andrew dissuades him. Still hoping to become a soccer star, Jamal keeps himself in practice by playing against a team of Australian Navy men. However, just as he finally scores a goal, terrible news comes: His parents’ boat has sunk. The Navy is still searching the area, but only three young people are thought to have survived. A Navy man tells Jamal that they are on a small island that is used by the Navy to hold refugees indefinitely. In despair, Jamal and Bibi seclude themselves in their tent. Eventually, Omar confesses to Jamal that his parents were not on the missing boat; they died when he was two. He pretended to be with a large family of strangers to stow away on the voyage to Australia. He says that his own ancestors were not warriors or bakers (like Jamal’s) but thieves.

Three days after Jamal and Bibi’s arrival on the island, their parents are found alive by the Navy, along with most of the other missing refugees, and brought to the island. Jamal, Bibi, and Omar are all beside themselves with joy. Jamal persists in believing that he and Bibi have bright futures as soccer stars and will use their popularity to change the government of Afghanistan. Andrew tells Jamal that he and his family might never be allowed to immigrate to Australia because of the current government’s policies. Jamal grapples with the paradox of Andrew’s kindness and the larger indifference of many Australians to the plight of immigrants. However, with new friends and reunited with his parents, he still feels hopeful. Patting the distraught Andrew on the arm, he tells him the “secret” of soccer: “Never give up, […] even when things are looking hopeless” (181).