Point of View

"A Long Walk to Water" is written in the third person, and is written from either Nya's or Salva's point of view, depending which of the two stories is being told. In the final chapter of the novel the two storylines come together, and the point of view is Nya's. Either Nya or Salva is at the center of every scene in the novel, and the action and events in the story are presented as they are seen and experienced by these two main characters. Nya's and Salva's thoughts and feelings are continually presented by the author and this allows the reader to better understand what they are going through and also helps to make the reader care about what happens to them.

The story is told mostly through descriptive narrative and there is very little dialogue used in the novel. Those sections where dialogue is...