The Memory of Love

by Aminatta Forna

Overview

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book
Finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction
An Essence Book Club Pick

In contemporary Sierra Leone, a devastating civil war has left an entire populace with secrets to keep. In the capital hospital, a gifted young surgeon is plagued by demons that are beginning to threaten his livelihood. Elsewhere in the hospital lies a dying man who was young during the country’s turbulent postcolonial years and has stories to tell that are far from heroic. As past and present intersect in the buzzing city, these men are drawn unwittingly closer by a British psychologist with good intentions, and into the path of one woman at the center of their stories. A work of breathtaking writing and rare wisdom, The Memory of Love seamlessly weaves together two generations of African life to create a story of loss, absolution, and the indelible effects of the past—and, in the end, the very nature of love.

“[A] luminous tale of passion and betrayal.”—Maaza Mengiste, The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802145680
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	09/13/2011
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	284,569
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Aminatta Forna is also the author of Ancestor Stones, a novel, and The Devil That Danced on the Water, a memoir of her activist father and her country, Sierra Leone.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Delivering us to a common center, no matter where we happen to be have been born, Aminatta Forna tackles those great human experiences of love and war, of friendship, rivalry, of death and triumphant survival. Often darkly funny, written with gritty realism and tenderness, The Memory of Love is a profoundly affecting work.” —Kiran Desai, winner of the Man Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss

“A subtle and complex exploration, daring in depth and scope… Forna is a writer of great talent who does not shy from tackling the toughest questions about why humans do the things they do: from the smallest acts of betrayal to the greatest acts of love.” —Monica Ali , author of Brick Lane

“She threads her stories like music, imperceptibly into the reader’s consciousness. One is left hauntingly familiar with the distant and alien; not quite able to distinguish the emotional spirits of fiction from the scars of reality.” —Sam Kiley, The Times (UK)

“To read The Memory of Love is to experience, not simply learn about, the inner existences of its characters, even as they lapse in and out of their lives.” —Anjali Joseph, Times Literary Supplement

"As Forna's forensic re-inhabiting of the aftermath of the conflict reveals, these wounds may have vivid physical realities, but it is always behind the eyes that they are felt most keenly." — The Observer (UK)

"If West Africa has lived through some of the most grotesque episodes of the 20th century, it has also been blessed with several generations of extraordinary writing talents who continue to turn those ordeals into heart-rending literature." — Michela Wrong, The Spectator (UK)

Editorial Reviews

Praise for The Memory of Love:

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book
Finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction
An Essence Book Club Pick

“Forna has achieved something . . . startling and impressive here. Here is a luminous tale of passion and betrayal. . . . At the core of this novel is the brave and beating heart, at once vulnerable and determined, unwilling to let go of all it has ever loved.”—Maaza Mengiste, New York Times Book Review

“A remarkable feat of storytelling. . . . [and] a thrilling story of friendship and betrayal.”—Karen Holt, Essence

“A sprawling, epic novel of love in Sierra Leone from Aminatta Forna, a rising literary star.”—Marie Claire

“[Forna is] among the most powerful of new voices from Africa. . . . A novel about the persistence of hope and the redemptive power of love.”—The Globe and Mail

“[An] elegantly rendered novel of loss and rehabilitation . . . [that] coalesces into an ambitious exploration of trauma and storytelling.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“The real pleasure of Forna’s storytelling is in her scrutiny of her characters’ inner lives and her ability to connect their choices to the moral dilemmas of a traumatized society.”—The New Yorker

“[Forna’s] visceral appreciation of her troubled country is evident on every page of The Memory of Love. So, too, is her probing intelligence—and her compassion.”—Brooke Allen, Salon.com

"She threads her stories like music. . . . One is left hauntingly familiar with the distant and alien; not quite able to distinguish the emotional spirits of fiction from the scars of real experience." —The Times (London)

“[A] wise, compassionate novel . . . A universal tale of love, of war’s power to cripple souls as it maims bodies, and of the triumphant human spirit, overcoming the forces that seek to crush it.”—Philip Caputo, author of Rumor of War, Acts of Faith and Crossers

“A poignant story about friendship, betrayal, obsession and second chances . . . Bold, deeply moving and accomplished, [Forna’s novel] confirms her place among the most talented writers in literature today."—Commonwealth Writers’ Prize judges

“Often darkly funny, written with gritty realism and tenderness, The Memory of Love is a profoundly affecting work.”—Kiran Desai, winner of the Man Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss

“In careful, precise prose, Forna makes even the seemingly commonplace details meaningful. These particulars speak to overarching themes of human experience: devotion, betrayal, and resilience.”—Nora Dunne, The Christian Science Monitor

“A subtle and complex exploration, daring in depth and scope, of both the psyche of a war and the attractions which it holds for an outsider. Forna is a writer of great talent who does not shy from tackling the toughest questions about why humans do the things they do: from the smallest acts of betrayal to the greatest acts of love.”—Monica Ali, author of Brick Lane

“Brilliant . . . Forna . . . turn[s] each scene into a metaphor that reverberates with meaning beyond the event itself…This is a remarkable novel.”—Helon Habila, The Guardian (UK)

“The author's visceral appreciation of her troubled country is evident on every page of The Memory of Love. So, too, is her probing intelligence—and her compassion.”— Brooke Allen, Barnes & Noble Review (online)

“A soft-spoken story of brutality and endurance . . . Forna’s insight, elegance and elegiac tone never falter. Tragedy and its aftermath are affectingly, memorably evoked in this multistranded narrative from a significant talent.” –Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“To read The Memory of Love is to experience, not simply learn about, the inner existences of its characters, even as they lapse in and out of their lives.” –Anjali Joseph, Times Literary Supplement (UK)

“Forna’s portrait of Sierra Leone—its citizens and the over-eager expatriates who pour in with good intentions—throbs with life.”—Karen Valby, Entertainment Weekly

“Fate and tragedy intertwine in this stunning and powerful portrait of a country in the aftermath of a decade of civil war.”—Kristine Huntley, Booklist

"This is powerful and necessary reading."—Karen Briggs, Shelf Awareness (online)

"Intelligent, engrossing and beautifully crafted." —The Daily Mail (UK)

“The Memory of Love is the most significant novel that I have read since Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence. . . . This is an extraordinary meditation on the capacity that men and women have to survive in the midst of the most overwhelming obstacles that war and all its attendant violence and degradation can throw in front of them. Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love is the first major novel of the new decade.”—Charles R. Larson, Counter Punch (online)

"The Memory of Love is a beautifully crafted tale of life in Sierra Leone in the aftermath of the civil war. . . . A book . . . to savour and share." —Stylist (UK)

From the Publisher

…a luminous tale of passion and betrayal…[Forna] forces us to see past bland categorizations like "postcolonial African literature," showing that the world we inhabit reaches beyond borders and ripples out through generations. She reminds us that what matters most is that which keeps us grounded in the place of our choosing. And she writes to expose what remains after all the noise has faded: at the core of this novel is the brave and beating heart, at once vulnerable and determined, unwilling to let go of all it has ever loved.
—The New York Times

Maaza Mengiste

Forma, recipient of a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Ancestor Stones, returns to Africa's troubled conscience in this admirable if uneven outing. Adrian Lockheart is a well-meaning English psychologist who embarks on a temporary post at a Sierra Leone hospital intending to modernize treatment of the long-neglected schizophrenics, transients, and scarred victims of civil war who walk the hospital grounds. He soon meets his match in the elderly ex-professor Elias Cole, who speaks eloquently of his country's turbulent history--and also of his passion for the wife of a more radically minded colleague whose eventual disappearance Cole may be implicated in. As the holes in Elias's story widen, Adrian falls for a patient's daughter and into conflict with a surgeon, and ripples from the unexamined past threaten the present. Yet Forma's material doesn't measure up to the book's length. The book's prolixity, combined with scenes that drag or come off as forced, certainly doesn't ruin the experience, but it does occasionally glut what amounts to a heartening cry for moral responsibility in the thick of maddening injustice. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Forna's second novel after her well-regarded memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water, takes place in Sierra Leone and weaves stories, past and present, involving Kai, a young surgeon; Elias, an older patient; and Adrian, a British psychiatrist.

Library Journal

This prize-winning literary novel is set during the civil war in Sierra Leone. For some readers, such books can be dry or inaccessible in print. Kobna Holdbrook-Smith's delivery creates a smoldering tale of mounting danger. His baritone is rich, deeply infusing the characters with liveliness. He varies his pitch and pace to depict the female characters and their dialogue. Holdbrook-Smith's diction is precise, enunciated, and deliberate, and his slight British accent underscores the colonial history of the story's setting. The overall effect is rather like watching a “Masterpiece Contemporary” episode. M.R. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2012 - AudioFile

In a soft-spoken story of brutality and endurance set in postwar Sierra Leone, three lonely men are connected by love and a legacy of terror.

Gravitas distinguishes the ambitious second novel by Forna (Ancestor Stones, 2006, etc.), which uses a handful of perspectives and consciences to consider the impact of civil war on an African nation. Adrian Lockheart, a British psychiatrist, is treating elderly, dying Elias Cole, a history lecturer who recounts his obsession, decades earlier, with Saffia, the wife of Julius, a colleague who is suddenly arrested and who dies in police custody. Although she does not love him, Saffia later marries Elias and they have a child. Was Elias partly complicit in Julius's death? Kai, a surgeon at the same hospital as Adrian who has treated victims of the civil war, notably amputees cleaved by machetes, is haunted by terrible events. And Adrian is drawn deeper into recent history by a patient whose disorder symbolizes the scarcely bearable legacy of atrocities inflicted on the civilian population. Setting her story against a background of streets, beaches, bars, police stations and hospitals, Forna evokes a vivid social and cultural panorama. Affection between characters is overshadowed by politics, poverty and the larger fingerprint of a bloody past. While later episodes are weakened by occasional lapses of subtlety and too much connection heaped on a single character, Forna's insight, elegance and elegiac tone never falter.

Tragedy and its aftermath are affectingly, memorably evoked in this multistranded narrative from a significant talent.

Kirkus Reviews