Another new release for 2013, and this one comes from Aminatta Forna, author of The Memory of Love. Her latest novel The Hired Man, will be published in the UK on March 28th by Bloomsbury.  Here's the synopsis: 

Gost is surrounded by mountains and fields of wild flowers. The summer sun burns. The Croatian winter brings freezing winds. Beyond the boundaries of the town an old house which has lain empty for years is showing signs of life. One of the windows, glass darkened with dirt, today stands open, and the lively chatter of English voices carries across the fallow fields. Laura and her teenage children have arrived.

A short distance away lies the hut of Duro Kolak who lives alone with his two hunting dogs. As he helps Laura with repairs to the old house, they uncover a mosaic beneath the ruined plaster and, in the rising heat of summer, painstakingly restore it. But Gost is not all it seems; conflicts long past still suppurate beneath the scars. 

                                                                                                                 - Excerpt from Bloomsbury

More 2013 releases can be found here, here and here.

The title might make you think this is your everyday chick-lit, but the Memory of Love is more than that.  Aminatta Forna tells a beautiful story of love, loss and betrayal over 3 decades. The more you read the book, the more you realise how appropriate the title is, as each character has a memory of love that haunts them.


It begins in 2002 Sierra Leone, where Elias Cole, a dying historian, tells his story to Adrian Lockheart, a British psychologist. Elias Cole takes us back to 1969 Sierra Leone, where he tells the story of Saffia, the woman he once (obsessively) loved. Outside the hospital, Adrian befriends Kai Mansaray, a young Sierra Leone surgeon, who is tormented by the memory of the civil war in the 1990s and is also haunted by the memory of love - his true love Nenebah. As for Adrian, he has left his wife and daughter in England and helps the people of Sierra Leone recover from the trauma of the civil war. He too falls in love, with Mamakay. As the story unfolds, we find out that these three men are all linked together by their love for a young woman. But we don't only meet these three characters, we meet other people. Like Adrian's patients and through their stories we get to see the real impact of war on people.


The Memory of Love is possibly one of the best books I have read in a while.


5 out of 5 stars

2011 was another amazing year for African literature and the Africa Book Club chose its best books of 2011 by African authors. Here are a few.