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​“The best war novel told from a young boy’s perspective since Jerzy Kozinski’s The Painted Bird.”
—Nyoul Lueth Tong, author of There is a Country: 
New Writing from the New Country of South Sudan

"Many people have heard of Africa's lost boys, but none tell their story quite so well as Harriet Levin Millan, who shares her first-hand account, in this elegantly written book. As inspirational as it is lustrous." 
--Readers Digest

“…the strength here is in Millan’s ability to fully inhabit Majok’s consciousness; she has crafted a rich tale that authentically portrays—and doesn’t exploit—Majok’s refugee experience. A deeply felt novel of grace and intelligence.”
—Kirkus

“Generosity and justice prevail in the storytelling . . . an unforgettable individual portrait of all-too-impersonal war."
—The Rumpus

"For Majok, committing to a future in the U.S. feels like giving up on the prospect of resuming life with his family in Sudan. The novel brilliantly conveys how he carries the cumulative weight of his experiences, sometimes feeling most exhausted by it in quiet moments. Healing is not a straight trajectory, but a winding path through surprising places.”
—The Iowa Review

“How Fast Can You Runis an insightful, gripping, and compassionate account of the second Sudanese Civil War and refugee life in America. Michael Majok Kuch’s observations, as the author has written them, about what happens to him over the course of his young life are heartbreaking and hopeful in equal measure. Refugees are individuals. They are not the faceless, nameless millions we in the West encounter only on the evening news. How Fast Can You Run is an important reminder of this.”
—Consequence Magazine

"A powerful meditation on love, loss and triumph of survival. A stunning achievement not to be missed.”
—Elizabeth L. Silver, author of The Execution of Noa P. Singleton

"Brilliantly renders the contours of Dinka and refugee life as well as the internal life of a young refugee tormented by the loss of his family and his childhood. Congratulations to Milan. How Fast Can You Run is a marvelous achievement." 
—Deborah Scroggins, author Emma's War:
A True Story of Life and Death in Sudan

"Devastating, moving, full of magical grace."
—Tyler Meier, Executive Director, University of Arizona Poetry Center, 
Former Managing Editor, The Kenyon Review

"Genre bursting... full characterization from Sudan to Philadelphia, exacting detail from beginning to end, clearly visualized African landscapes in all their complexity...A fuller story than How Fast Can You Run cannot have been told of the tragic events of the war in Sudan that uproot the young boy from the Dinka plains of Southern Sudan to Kakuma refugee camp to Nairobi and Philadelphia and how he has to fight a different kind of war in America from which he emerges victorious. Epic. "
—Billy Kahora, Editor, Kwani  (Kenya)

" A beautiful and crucial story told by two people, one Sudanese with dreams of independence, the other, an American poet who listens to Michael Majok Kuch through her imagination. An enduring image for me—a refugee boy blowing up a discarded bloody surgical glove to make a soccer ball...reminds us that the most human of all activities, the one thing that binds us all is finding beauty even in impossible situations."
—Mukoma Wa Ngugi, author of Nairobi Heat

“With stirring compassion and evocative power, Harriet Levin Millan has recreated the heartbreakingly courageous odyssey of one ‘Lost Boy of Sudan,’ Michael Majok Kuch, as he escaped the hell of his homeland riven by genocidal conflict to the lonely limbo of a childhood spent in East African refugee and IDP camps...How Fast Can You Run is a novel of the moment as it informs and addresses the hardships, tragedies and wonders facing the 65 million refugees currently displaced by regional and international conflict.”
—Cheryl Pearl Sucher, author of The Rescue of Memory 

"I emerged from this ingenious fast-paced novel with the sensation of having been taken along by it protagonist on a poignant, heart-pounding journey, enlarged and changed."
—Okey Ndibe, author of Foreign Gods, Inc.