River Spirit
Leila Aboulela
List price £9.99
Product Details
- Format:
- Paperback / softback
- ISBN:
- 9780863569043
- Published:
- 05 Mar 2024
- Publisher:
- Saqi Books
- Dimensions:
- 336 pages - 198 x 129 x 25mm
- Availability:
- Available
Categories:
1880s Sudan. When Akuany and her brother are orphaned in a village raid, they are taken in by Yaseen, a young merchant whose vow to care for them will tether him to Akuany throughout their lives. As revolution brews, Sudan begins to prise itself from its Ottoman rulers, and everyone must choose sides. Yaseen feels beholden to stand against the self-proclaimed Mahdi, a decision that threatens to splinter his family. Meanwhile, Akuany grows into womanhood and travels alone across the fractured country, sold and traded from house to house, with only Yaseen as her intermittent lifeline. Their struggle will mirror the increasingly bloody struggle for Sudan itself: for freedom, safety and the possibility of love. River Spirit is a powerful tale of corruption and unshakeable devotion – to a cause, to one’s faith and to the people who become family.
This spellbinding new novel from New York Times Notable Author Leila Aboulela tells the unforgettable story of an embattled young woman's coming of age during the revolutionary war in nineteenth-century Sudan.
Leila Aboulela was born in Cairo, grew up in Khartoum and moved to Aberdeen in her mid-twenties. She is the author of five novels, Bird Summons, The Translator, a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year, The Kindness of Enemies, Minaret and Lyrics Alley, Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. She was the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, and her short story collection, Elsewhere, Home, won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages and she was longlisted three times for the Orange Prize for Fiction.