{"title":"Books by Aminatta Forna","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781408843161","title":"The Hired Man","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA powerful novel about the indelible effects of war and the memories which stir beneath the silence of a quiet Croatian town, from \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eOrange Prize-shortlisted and \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eCommonwealth Writers' Prize-winning author Aminatta Forna\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Supremely masterful'\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ci\u003eINDEPENDENT\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e'The Hired Man\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e seals her reputation as arguably the best writer of fiction in this field' \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eEVENING STANDARD\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Terrific skill and insight' \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eDAILY MAIL\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGost is surrounded by mountains and fields of wild flowers. The summer sun burns. The Croatian winter brings freezing winds. Beyond the boundaries of the town an old house which has lain empty for years is showing signs of life. One of the windows, glass darkened with dirt, today stands open, and the lively chatter of English voices carries across the fallow fields. Laura and her teenage children have arrived.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA short distance away lies the hut of Duro Kolak, who lives alone with his two hunting dogs. As he helps Laura with repairs to the old house, they uncover a mosaic beneath the ruined plaster and, in the rising heat of summer, painstakingly restore it. But Gost is not all it seems; conflicts long past still suppurate beneath the scars.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43204387537074,"sku":"9781408843161","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781408843161_c3b44293-51e4-41d0-ac75-5506a476e92f.jpg?v=1786019883"},{"product_id":"9781408809655","title":"The Memory of Love","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eShortlisted for the Orange Prize 2011\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'A writer of great talent and courage' \u003c\/b\u003eMONICA ALI\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'An affecting, passionate and intelligent novel about the redemptive power of love and storytelling'\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ci\u003eTELEGRAPH\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFreetown, Sierra Leone, 1969.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn a hot January evening that he will remember for decades, Elias Cole first catches sight of Saffia Kamara, the wife of a charismatic colleague.  He is transfixed. Thirty years later, lying in the capital's hospital, he recalls the desire that drove him to acts of betrayal he has tried to justify ever since. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eElsewhere in the hospital, Kai, a gifted young surgeon, is desperately trying to forget the pain of a lost love that torments him as much as the mental scars he still bears from the civil war that has left an entire people with terrible secrets to keep. It falls to a British psychologist, Adrian Lockheart, to help the two survivors, but when he too falls in love, past and present collide with devastating consequences.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Memory of Love\u003c\/i\u003e is a heartbreaking story of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43206123913394,"sku":"9781408809655","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781408809655_56db2b32-9adf-416b-b3d1-c27123bbddf6.jpg?v=1786019707"},{"product_id":"9781408893289","title":"Happiness","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Forna’s voice is relentlessly compelling, her ability to summon atmosphere extraordinary ... A thing of lasting beauty' \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eOBSERVER\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSHORTLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2019\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSHORTLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2019\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA breathtaking novel from Orange Prize-shortlisted and Commonwealth Writers’ Prize-winning author Aminatta Forna\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWaterloo Bridge, London. Two strangers collide. Attila, a Ghanaian psychiatrist, and Jean, an American studying the habits of urban foxes. From this chance encounter in the midst of the rush of a great city, numerous moments of connections span out and interweave, bringing disparate lives together.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAttila has arrived in London with two tasks: to deliver a keynote speech on trauma and to check up on the daughter of friends, his ‘niece’, Ama, who hasn’t called home in a while. It soon emerges that she has been swept up in an immigration crackdown – and now her young son Tano is missing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen, by chance, Attila bumps into Jean again, she joins him in his search for Tano, mobilizing into action the network she has built up, mainly from the many West African immigrants working London’s myriad streets, of volunteer fox-spotters: security guards, hotel doormen, traffic wardens. All unite to help and as the search continues, a deepening friendship between Attila and Jean unfolds.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this delicate yet powerful novel of loves lost and new, of past griefs and of the hidden side of a teeming metropolis, Aminatta Forna asks us to consider the values of the society we live in, our co-existence with one another and all living creatures – and the true nature of happiness.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Entering Forna’s sweeping universe transports you to a place that feels familiar, but also totally feral and full of surprises' \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eFINANCIAL TIMES\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e'Happiness \u003c\/i\u003eis a great pleasure to read because of how much life is packed in by Forna ... [it features] the most appealing protagonist I have encountered in a long while' \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eTHE TIMES\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'The best writer of fiction in this field' \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003eEVENING STANDARD\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43406036631730,"sku":"9781408893289","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781408893289_f0680d7c-985e-48d7-a310-040b178bdab6.jpg?v=1786019486"},{"product_id":"9780006531265","title":"The Devil That Danced on the Water","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn intimate and moving portrait of a family combined with an account of the events which swept through Africa in the post-independence period.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAminatta Forna’s intensely personal history is a passionate and vivid account of an African childhood – of an idyll that became a nightmare. As a child she witnessed the upheavals of post-colonial Africa, the bitterness of exile in Britain and the terrible consequences of her dissident father’s stand against tyranny.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMohamed Forna, a man of unimpeachable integrity and great charisma, was a new star in the political firmament Sierra Leone as the country faced its future as a fledgling democracy. Always a political firebrand, he was one of the first black students to come to Britain after the war. In Aberdeen he stole the heart of Aminatta's mother, to the dismay of her Presbyterian parents, and returned with her to Sierra Leone. But the new ways of Western parliamentary democracy were tearing old Africa apart, giving rise only to dictatorships and corruption of hitherto undreamed-of magnitude. It was not long before Aminatta’s father languished in jail as a prisoner of conscience, and there was worse to come.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAminatta’s search for the truth that shaped both her childhood and the nation’s destiny begins among the country's elite and takes her into the heart of rebel territory. Determined to break the silence surrounding her father’s fate, she ultimately uncovered a conspiracy that penetrated the highest reaches of government and forced the nation's politicians and judiciary to confront their guilt.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56219790311797,"sku":"9780006531265","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780006531265_f50ad44c-326a-402d-aff8-e8aad8b7bfc3.jpg?v=1785658660"},{"product_id":"9780747585923","title":"Ancestor Stones","description":"Abie follows the arc of a letter from London back to Africa to a coffee plantation that now could be hers if she wants it. Standing among the ruined groves she strains to hear the sound of the past, but the layers of years are too many. Thus begins the gathering of her family's history through the tales of her aunts - four women born to four different wives of a wealthy plantation owner, her grandfather. Asana, Mariama, Hawa and Serah: theirs is the story of a nation, a family and four women's attempts to alter the course of her own destiny.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56296788132213,"sku":"9780747585923","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780747585923_4f4428e7-3902-4380-988f-4848a4d6cb59.jpg?v=1786015366"},{"product_id":"rift-hb","title":"Rift","description":"An ambitious book that examines the African Rift Valley and Great Lakes region from deep time to today. Mixing travel, environmentalism, nature writing and anthropology, Aminatta Forna will write a deeply humane, broad-thinking book about the interconnectedness of people and the places we inhabit.Africa's Great Rift Valley stretches from the Red Sea through East Africa to the southern end of Mozambique. In all the area touches seven African countries: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania. The wider Great Lakes region encompasses Rwanda and Congo. It is biologically and physiographically Africa's most diverse region, encompassing every conceivable habitat from deserts to snowfields, active volcanoes to deep water abyss, lowland rainforest to acacia savanna. Centred here, the book will give a grand and sophisticated new vision of the African continent, considering what life in Africa has meant and looked like - and eyeing up in particular whether 'progress' is a straight line or whether our beginnings can be more relevant to our current crises and future than we might expect.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57682776523125,"sku":"9780008473976","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":57495387570549,"sku":"9780008473969","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-aminatta-forna.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}