In 1975, Mohamed Forna, a doctor and leading Sierra Leonean dissident, was executed for treason. A quarter century later, his daughter, who was ten when he was arrested, began to investigate his death. Her lucid, exacting memoir recounts indelible scenes: in bed with malaria, she watches a soldier ransack her room; when her stepmother goes to plead for her father's life, Aminatta asks her to get the President's autograph. She interviews the men who gave false testimony against her father, and discerns in their matter-of-fact responses a "lack of expectation" that defines life in Sierra Leone after decades of violence. In a telling episode, her stepmother takes pity on one of these witnesses, who is now destitute, and hires him as a cook. The author wonders if it is in this way, "together under the same roof," that she and her countrymen must learn to live with the past.
Forna saw her father for the last time on July 30, 1974; she was 10 years old. In this harrowing memoir-cum-detective story, journalist Forna searches for the truth about her father's execution in Sierra Leone after his treason conviction for allegedly attempting a coup upon the government in which he had once been a cabinet minister. Mohamed Forna, a British-educated doctor and activist in what was, in the 1960s, a fledgling democracy extricating itself from British colonialist rule, resigned from what had become a dictatorship rife with corruption and chaos. The consequences of that resignation culminated in eight executions and precipitated the descent into anarchy of Africa's poorest nation. Forna writes with a compelling mix of distance and anguish, intent on explaining her father's death and reclaiming his memory. Lush descriptions of her idyllic childhood provide eerie counterpoint to chilling depictions of the hell Sierra Leone had become upon her return in recent years, a place where bands of child warriors, hacking off limbs as both punishment and warning, have created a mutilated populace. The poverty her father tried to fight remains the only constant in the war-torn land. A harsh critic of her father's executioners, Forna nevertheless equivocates on the dictatorships that have wreaked havoc throughout Africa, querying her own identity as a diaspora mixed-race Afro-European. 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 expos . Agent, David Godwin. (Jan.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Forna, a writer and broadcaster who lives in London, has written this memoir as an act of catharsis and discovery. The daughter of a white British mother and a black African father from Sierra Leone, Forna focuses on her attempts to discover why her father, Mohamed, who became a prisoner of conscience, was executed for treason while she was a teenager going to school in England. Her journey is both mental and physical. She reexamines her childhood memories in painful detail and describes her later trips to Sierra Leone as an investigative reporter with a personal mission. After extensive interviews with some of her father's accusers, she shows conclusively that he was framed by his political enemies, who were led by the president of the country. 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. Highly recommended for most libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 19/15/02.]-A.O. Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, IN Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.
London-based broadcaster Forna somberly chronicles her search for the truth about her father’s 1974 arrest and subsequent hanging in Sierra Leone. Mohamed Forna was the first of his family, a regionally powerful clan, to attend university. He studied medicine at St. Andrew’s in Scotland and in the 1960s went back to Sierra Leone with his young white wife. Their daughter begins her story with a description of the first ten years of her own life, leading up to the day she last saw her father, accused of carrying out a bombing attack on a government minister. Forna recalls that her parents were initially happy together during the years he ran a small clinic and hospital he had founded in a rural area to help his people. But her father’s increasing involvement in politics led to estrangement, the couple separated, and her mother took the children briefly to Scotland. They returned when Mohammed was appointed Finance Minister, but the marriage continued to unravel, as did the country. Forna affectingly but dispassionately details Sierra Leone’s long, bloody spiral—still ongoing—into chaos. Her father was removed from office. Corrupt dictators ended democratic rule, destroyed the economy, and ruthlessly punished opponents like Mohammed Forna, who believed in democracy. His daughter also describes her encounters with racism as a child at English schools, her mother’s remarriage and disappearance from their lives, and her relations with Mohammed’s new wife, who had to protect his children as well as try to save his life. Returning to Sierra Leone in the early ’90s was not easy; Forna’s investigation into her father’s death revealed unrepentant complicity and lying that said much aboutthe current state of politics in a country that has wantonly destroyed its future. A searing indictment of African tyranny mingled with bittersweet childhood memories. First printing of 35,000; $50,000 ad/promo
An absorbing account of Aminatta Forna’s family and life: the joy and difficulties her parents faced in their early days, the ambitions and triumphs of later years, and the disappointment and tragedy that befell the family in the turbulence that almost overwhelmed the nation… Eloquent without recrimination, and truthful without rancour.” — Abdulrazak Gurnah, Novel Laureate
“Aminatta Forna’s quest is urgent and heroic. She must face down a brutal war that deprived her of a beloved father and country. She must redeem those losses by pursuing justice in every form: political, cultural, and spiritual. We follow her from childhood to adulthood, from Sierra Leone to England, from indictment to elegy. This is a searing and wise memoir.” — Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland and Constructing a Nervous System
“There were times while reading this beautiful book when I had to ask myself whether I was holding my breath from the beauty of the language, or from the events unfolding on the page. Moving and provocative, The Devil that Danced on Water is at once an impassioned eulogy for a father, and a daughter's brave and relentless examination of what led to his death. Formidably talented and fiercely intelligent, Aminatta Forna reminds us, in a way that few others can, that reckoning with the past can render a form of justice, no matter the distance and years.” — Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King, shortlisted for the Booker Prize
''Forna has written a profound, moving elegy not only to her heroic father, but also to the dashed dreams of Africa's independence. Sharp-eyed, but always compassionate, she plaits national tragedy with the delightful details of a seventies childhood, comic cultural confusions with the anguish of parental break-up, diplomatic glamour with clinical descriptions of the horrors of civil war. This is also a thrilling journalistic investigation that digs through layers to expose government corruption, collusion and moral disintegration. A classic of trauma and resilience that through its clarity, depth and intellectual integrity, expands our understanding of humanity.'' — Leila Aboulela, author of Minaret and River Spirit
"We could place [Forna's] memoir of Sierra Leone alongside Nega Mezlekia's Notes from the Hyena's Belly, about Ethiopia, or Rian Malan's My Traitor's Heart, about South Africa. All these remarks would be accurate enough, but they would fail to capture what The Devil That Danced on the Water most certainly is: a masterpiece that makes sense of senselessness." — Lorraine Adams, The Washington Post
“Forna has written a book that is impossible to forget, or to confuse with any other memoir of tyrannical times...This is an obsessive, driven, refreshing book about Africa, despotism and exile. It is also a beautifully drawn portrait of childhood, and the ruses, stratagems, and sheer bloody-mindedness that Aminatta used to keep her young self safe, and sane in a world ruled by murder, marriage and constant movement."— Christopher Hope, The Washington Post
“Harrowing...Forna writes with a compelling mix of distance and anguish, intent on explaining her father’s death and reclaiming his memory. Lush descriptions of her idyllic childhood provide eerie counterpoint to the chilling depictions of the hell Sierra Leone had become upon her return in recent years...Reminiscent of Isabelle Allende’sHouse of the Spirits, Forna’s work is a powerfully and elegantly written mix of complex history, riveting memoir and damning expose."— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“An African memoir unlike any before it.”—The Economist
"The Devil that Danced on the Water is an impressive contribution to the literature of post-colonial Africa, the mysterious continent that continues to resist all attempts to remake it in a Western image.”— Jason Cowley, The Times, Book of the Week
