An intimate and moving portrait of a family combined with an account of
the events which swept through Africa in the post-independence period.
Aminatta 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.
Mohamed 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. Aminatta'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.
The Devil That Danced on the Water : A Daughter's Memoir - Aminatta Forna
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£10.99