By Reni Eddo-Lodge – UK. Writing on black life in Britain has long been the poor relation of its African American equivalent, not least because, in the hierarchy of suffering, the daily slights endured by black Britons do not bear comparison to the existential threat to African American lives. She’s strong on the pervasive racial […]
By Orhan Pamuk - Turkey. The Museum of Innocence - set in Istanbul between 1975 and today - tells the story of Kemal, the son of one of Istanbul's richest families, and of his obsessive love for a poor and distant relation, the beautiful Fusun, who is a shop-girl in a small boutique. In his […]
By Ayesha Haruna Attah – Ghana. Aminah lives an idyllic life until she is brutally separated from her home and forced on a journey that turns her from a daydreamer into a resilient woman. Wurche, the willful daughter of a chief, is desperate to play an important role in her father's court. These two women's […]
By Kamal Abdullayev - Azerbaijan. Translated from Azerbaijani by Anne Thompson, this is a novel narrating the imaginary life of medieval icons. When a young researcher accidentally comes across a manuscript in the Manuscripts Institute, he discovers the unexpected but well-known epic Kitabi Dada Korkud, combined with the history of Azerbaijani shah and poet Shah […]
By Joanne Hillhouse – Antigua/Barbados. Zahara is a loner. She's brilliant on the guitar but in everyday life she doesn't really fit in. Then she meets Shaka, himself a musical genius and the first boy who really gets her. They discover that they share a special bond, their passion for music, and Zahara finds herself […]
By Sulaiman Addonia – Eritrea/Sudan Saba arrives in an East African refugee camp as a young girl, devastated to have had to abandon her books as her family fled. In this crowded and often hostile place, she must carve out her new existence, always protecting her mute brother Hagos. A moving portrait of a woman […]
By Min Jin Lee – Korea/Japan Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then Isak, a Christian […]
by Khaled Khalifa (tr by Leri Price) – Syria Khalifa portrays his native city under the grip of the Assad regimes though the lives of one family over three generations. In the once beautiful city of Aleppo, the family descends into tragedy and ruin. Irrepressible Sawsan flirts with militias, the ruling party, and finally religion, […]
By Akwaeke Emezi – Nigeria (hardback £10) Ada is the second child of Saul, a Nigerian doctor, and his Malaysian wife Saachi, a nurse. When Ada is still a child, Saachi leaves to work abroad, first in Saudi Arabia and then in the UK. Although she visits her family in Nigeria once or twice each […]
By Negar Djavadi (tr by Tina Kover) – Iran/France Kimiâ Sadr fled Iran at the age of ten in the company of her mother and sisters to join her father in France. Now twenty-five and facing the future she has built for herself as well as the prospect of a new generation, Kimiâ is inundated […]
Alone in his room in a London madrasah, Musah tries on an abaya, a hijab and a shawl: he has crossed over - to outsiders he has become a Muslim woman. In a Pakistani haveli, his cousin, the nubile Iram, waits to fulfil the will of Dadaji, their grandfather. She and Musa must marry. When […]
Set in the village of al-Awafi in Oman, we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries Abdallah after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries from a sense of duty; and Khawla, who rejects all offers while waiting for her beloved, who has emigrated to Canada. These three women and their families witness Oman evolve from a traditional, […]
