 | |
| Author | Aminatta Forna |
|---|---|
| Country | Scotland |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Memoir, Sierra Leone history |
| Published | 2002 (HarperCollins) |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 223 |
| ISBN | 9780802140487 |
| OCLC | 829656576 |
The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest is a 2002 book by Aminatta Forna about her childhood and an investigation into the execution of her father, Mohamed Forna. It was serialised as a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 and was runner-up for the 2003 Samuel Johnson Prize.
Reviewing The Devil That Danced on the Water for The Guardian , Victoria Brittain wrote: "Aminatta Forna's story of her father's execution on trumped-up treason charges, 25 years before anyone had heard of the Revolutionary United Front, gives a more personal framework for understanding the horror of the 1990s in the linked wars of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea." [1]
Booklist called it "stunning" and "an important look at the sad state of politics in Sierra Leone", [2] and the Library Journal saw it as "More than a tale of vindication, this book is filled with powerful descriptions and moving details and if overly long is nevertheless an important work." [2]
Christopher Hope, writing in The Independent , stated: "Forna has written a book that is impossible to forget, or to confuse with any other memoir of tyrannical times." and found it "an obsessive, driven, refreshing book about Africa, despotism and exile." [3]
The Devil That Danced on the Water has also been reviewed by Publishers Weekly , [4] Kirkus Reviews , [5] People , [6] Metro , [7] The New Yorker , [8] Confrontation, [9] and Entertainment Weekly . [10]
The Devil That Danced on the Water was on the shortlist for the 2003 Samuel Johnson Prize. [11] It was also Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 and was serialised in the Sunday Times . [12] [13]
Comparisons have been drawn between this work and Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria (2012) by Noo-Saro-Wiwa. [14]
Kathryn Harrison is an American author. She has published seven novels, two memoirs, two collections of personal essays, a travelogue, two biographies, and a book of true crime. She reviews regularly for The New York Times Book Review. Her personal essays have been included in many anthologies and have appeared in Bookforum, Harper's Magazine, More Magazine, The New Yorker, O, The Oprah Magazine, and Vogue, Salon, and Nerve.
Helon Habila Ngalabak is a Nigerian novelist and poet, whose writing has won many prizes, including the Caine Prize in 2001. He worked as a lecturer and journalist in Nigeria before moving in 2002 to England, where he was a Chevening Scholar at the University of East Anglia, and now teaches creative writing at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
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Cato Perkins was an African-American slave from Charleston, South Carolina who became a missionary to Sierra Leone.
Aminatta Forna, OBE, is a Scottish and Sierra Leonean writer. She is the author of a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest, and four novels: Ancestor Stones (2006), The Memory of Love (2010), The Hired Man (2013) and Happiness (2018). Her novel The Memory of Love was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for "Best Book" in 2011, and was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Forna is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and was, until recently, Sterling Brown Distinguished Visiting professor at Williams College in Massachusetts. She is currently Director and Lannan Foundation Chair of Poetics of the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University.
Goretti Kyomuhendo is a Ugandan novelist and literary activist. A participant at the inaugural International Literature Festival Berlin in 2001, Kyomuhendo has been internationally recognised for her novels such as Waiting: A Novel of Uganda's Hidden War. She was the first Programmes Coordinator for FEMRITE—Uganda Women Writers Association, from 1997 to 2007. She founded the African Writers Trust in 2009, after her relocation to London, Great Britain, in 2008.
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A Time of Angels is a 2003 book by Patricia Schonstein and follows the lives of a number of Italian Jews in post-Apartheid South Africa.
Ancestor Stones is a 2006 novel by Aminatta Forna about the experiences of four women in a polygamous family in West Africa.
The Memory of Love is a 2010 novel by Aminatta Forna about the experiences of three men in Sierra Leone. In 2022, it was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II.
The Hired Man is a 2013 novel by Aminatta Forna about an Englishwoman, Laura, and her two children who renovate a farmhouse in Croatia with the help of local handyman, Duro and the revealing of the recent history of the area.
The Nickel Boys is a 2019 novel by American novelist Colson Whitehead. It is based on the historic Dozier School, a reform school in Florida that operated for 111 years and was revealed as highly abusive. A university investigation found numerous unmarked graves for unrecorded deaths and a history into the late 20th century of emotional and physical abuse of students. '
Namina Forna is a Sierra Leonean American author of young adult fiction and a screenwriter. Her debut novel The Gilded Ones was published in February 2021 and quickly entered the New York Times and Indie Bestseller lists.
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The Gilded Ones is a 2021 young adult fantasy novel by Sierra Leonean American writer Namina Forna. Forna's debut novel, it was published on February 9, 2021, and quickly entered the New York Times Best Seller list and Indie Bestseller lists.
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Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria is a 2012 non-fiction memoir and travelogue by Noo Saro-Wiwa. In it Saro-Wiwa travels across Nigeria, re-discovering the country of her birth. The book has been compared to those of many other diasporic writers.
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 exposé.
A searing indictment of African tyranny mingled with bittersweet childhood memories.