First published 2018
In three villages across Sudan's Nuba Mountains, families watch their traditional world dissolve. Amara tends crops that no longer follow ancient patterns while markets demand new ways of thinking about land and labor. Her neighbors abandon age-old kinship ties as individual survival trumps communal bonds. The Islamic government in Khartoum tightens its grip while civil war rages around them. Village elders lose authority as younger generations pursue different paths. Households scramble to adapt their survival strategies as modernization compresses decades of change into mere years. Some families prosper by embracing new agricultural methods and market opportunities. Others find themselves cut off from both old securities and new possibilities. The lineage system that once protected the Nuba people crumbles, leaving them exposed to forces beyond their control. Through intimate portraits of daily life, Davidson reveals how global transformation plays out in cooking fires and family arguments, in decisions about marriage and migration, in the quiet moments when people realize their children will inhabit a completely different world.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, african-literature, contemporary
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: cultural-clash, family-dynamics, societal-upheaval
Setting: Sudan, Nuba Mountains
Period: Contemporary
328 pages · Kindle Edition · Routledge