Poverty, slavery, mass murder: These are the torments that devour the children in "Say You're One of Them," a book so overwhelming that when you put it down — if you can — it takes a minute to adjust to the world around you. The writer is Uwem Akpan, a young Nigerian Jesuit. Each of the five stories in his debut collection is set in a different African nation; each is told from a child's point of view; two are strong, three are devastating.

"An Ex-Mas Feast," set in Nairobi, may be the most benign, because it deals with nothing worse than extreme want and degradation. Its hungry young protagonist is certainly better off than the Beninese brother and sister in "Fattening for Gabon," whose parents are dying of AIDS and whose uncle is selling them.

Much of the story's terror lies in the strange ambiguity of the deal. Why are they being "fattened?" They're told that in Gabon they'll be nourished and educated, but something is off. "Mama" and "Papa," the sinister couple making the purchase, are unnervingly jolly (until they're crossed). Thugs are involved. The children's uncle grows distraught at what he's done; he wants to back out. Violence erupts. Horror follows.

In the brief, gentle "What Language Is That?" Christian and Muslim best friends are pulled apart by religious conflict in their Ethiopian city. "My Parents' Bedroom" unfolds during the Rwandan genocide, and it rises with the full power of shock to the horror of its subject.

But I think the greatest story in this amazing volume is the novella "Luxurious Hearses," which takes place in Nigeria during an outbreak of anti-Christian massacres. On a parked bus, refugees fleeing south wait nervously for their driver to arrive. The story is told from the viewpoint of Jubril, at 16 the oldest of Akpan's protagonists and the least innocent.

Jubril is the son of a Muslim mother who deserted her Catholic husband in the south and raised her two sons in her faith in the north. Jubril and his Muslim friends have plenty of Christian blood on their hands, but in this latest unrest his friends, aware of his history, have turned on him.

Now, fleeing to his father, he finds himself on a bus packed with the Christians he despises, who he knows will kill him if they learn he's a Muslim. Which they may easily do: His right hand has been amputated as a penalty for theft according to Sharia, the Islamic code. It marks him, and if he takes his stump out of his pocket, the game will be up.

So the story is tense. Yet at the same time it's droll and humane — part Faulkner and part Naipaul.

It takes a great writer to face the extremes of human depravity without sensationalizing them or trivializing them with easy judgments. Akpan doesn't blink, yet these stories have none of the moral queasiness of voyeurism. And somehow the author manages to love his characters — even the killers. It makes sense that he's a priest.