Kid Moses, by Mark R Thornton

This debut novel follows eleven-year-old Moses, an abandoned street child in Dar es Salaam, as he moves repeatedly between the city's hardships and the surrounding wilderness with his friend Kioso and later a hunter named Boyd. Publishers Weekly's review notes it presents a tough, unsentimental view of childhood survival, portraying "the harrowing adult world through the eyes of a child" without romanticising the traumatic events that force Moses to grow up fast.