This intensely personal history is a passionate and vivid account of an African childhood, of an idyll which became the stuff of nightmare. As a child, she witnessed the upheavals of post-colonial Africa, danger, flight, the bitterness of exile in Britain, and the terrible consequences of her dissident father's stand against tyranny. ...

"Forna offers a human account of Sierra Leone's tragedy that does much to remedy a media image of a faraway country that suffers a bizarre fate at the hands of inscrutable rebels." William Reno, Chicago Tribune

This was the very personal and touching memoir of a girl's childhood and family. Her mother was Scottish. Her father was from Sierra Leone, was educated as a doctor in Britain, and eventually went into the government. She spent her youth moving back and forth between Sierra Leone and Britain, and living with various parents/grandparents. It was a confusing and dangerous life, but she told it with emotion and drew me right into her world and her innocence. Although I've done a lot of reading lately about turbulent places and times, this book touched me deeply.

I put this in the mail this morning to hendertuckian, as part of a Virtual Book Box for books outside North America & Europe.

The first part of this book was re-visiting childhood memories the second part of this book was piecing together the final months of her father's life. Both were a wonderfull read letting me smile and cry along with her.
on its way to katyan

This book arrived here today! Once again we went to pick the package up from the local post office, and Satya was carrying it all the way back home. The ladies working at the local post office really adore her now... :) And this time it was super nice for her, as there was a huge treat for her too with the books, and she was so happy in receiving it at home! I'll try to put a picture of her & the treat here soon...Thank you!!!

Thank you Katyan for bringing the book to me. This book is a fine addition to my A Book from Every Country Challenge. I'll read the book and let it continue its travels afterwards. A Happy New Year to you!

From Publishers Weekly
Forna saw her father for the last time on July 30, 1974; she was 10 years old. In this harrowing memoir-cum-detective story, journalist Forna searches for the truth about her father's execution in Sierra Leone after his treason conviction for allegedly attempting a coup upon the government in which he had once been a cabinet minister. Mohamed Forna, a British-educated doctor and activist in what was, in the 1960s, a fledgling democracy extricating itself from British colonialist rule, resigned from what had become a dictatorship rife with corruption and chaos. The consequences of that resignation culminated in eight executions and precipitated the descent into anarchy of Africa's poorest nation. Forna writes with a compelling mix of distance and anguish, intent on explaining her father's death and reclaiming his memory. Lush descriptions of her idyllic childhood provide eerie counterpoint to chilling depictions of the hell Sierra Leone had become upon her return in recent years, a place where bands of child warriors, hacking off limbs as both punishment and warning, have created a mutilated populace. The poverty her father tried to fight remains the only constant in the war-torn land. A harsh critic of her father's executioners, Forna nevertheless equivocates on the dictatorships that have wreaked havoc throughout Africa, querying her own identity as a diaspora mixed-race Afro-European. Reminiscent of Isabelle Allende's House of the Spirits, Forna's work is a powerfully and elegantly written mix of complex history, riveting memoir and damning expos‚

From Library Journal
Forna's father, Mohamed, was a leading politician in newly liberated Sierra Leone but landed in jail as a prisoner of conscience when democracy turned to dictatorship.

403 pages