By Aminatta Forna
Late one night when Forna was 10, her father—a Sierra Leone doctor and popular former cabinet minister—was taken from their home and executed in a government attempt to quash democracy. But this isn't a political book. In the first part of this moving memoir, Forna brings her family to life, in both their idyllic ups (family gatherings in Freetown) and incongruous downs (living in a camper in her mother's native Scotland).
In the second, shorter section, an adult Forna, now a British journalist, returns to her father's homeland looking for the truth behind his death. Instead, she discovers the story of an entire nation's demise. "How fragile life is in a country like this," she writes. And how lucky the reader who sees it through her eyes. (Atlantic Monthly, $25)
BOTTOM LINE: Poignant and passionate
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