Coming of Age Across the Central Mediterranean Route: E.C. Osondu’s When the Sky is Ready the Stars Will Appear

In the past decades, the Central Mediterranean Route connecting Africa to Europe has been crossed mainly by young people looking for better life conditions and alleged democracy in the West. Concerned with border control and humanitarian policies, Western dominant narratives focus on the migrant vs. refugee categorization, often neglecting the fact that for these young Africans the “Mediterranean Passage” is also an initiation journey. E.C. Osondu’s coming-of-age novel When the Sky is Ready the Stars Will Appear (2021) reminds us that behind every journey there are individuals with their dreams, hopes, troubles and ambitions. Its protagonist, an orphan from an unspecified African village, decides to leave home to reach the city of his dreams: Rome. In his odyssey, we recognize the voyage of the young people who cross the “Black Mediterranean” but also the story of any young man eager to get to know the world.