First published 2002
Aminatta Forna returns to Sierra Leone to investigate what happened to her father, Mohamed Forna, a charismatic politician who opposed the country's slide into dictatorship. As a child, she lived through the chaos of post-colonial Africa before fleeing to Britain. Her father, one of the first black students to study in Britain after the war, had married her Scottish mother and brought his family back to help build the new democracy. But Sierra Leone's parliamentary system collapsed into corruption and tyranny. Mohamed Forna was imprisoned as a dissident, then disappeared entirely. Decades later, his daughter begins her own investigation. She interviews the country's elite and travels into rebel territory, determined to break the silence around her father's fate. Her search uncovers a conspiracy reaching the highest levels of government and forces politicians and judges to face their complicity in his death.
Genres: historical-fiction, african-literature, biography-memoir, political-thriller
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: investigative-journalism, personal-history
Setting: Britain, Sierra Leone
Period: Post-Colonial
403 pages · Paperback · Flamingo