River Spirit
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £6.49
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- £6.49
Publisher Description
When Akuany and her brother are orphaned in a village raid, they're taken in by a young merchant Yaseen who promises to care for them, a vow that tethers him to Akuany through their adulthood. As revolution begins to brew, led by the self-proclaimed Mahdi, Sudan begins to prise itself from Ottoman rule, and everyone must choose a side.
Yaseen feels beholden to stand against this false Mahdi, a decision that threatens to splinter his family. Meanwhile, Akuany moves through her young adulthood and across the country alone, sold and traded from house to house, with only Yaseen as her intermittent lifeline. Their struggle mirrors the increasingly bloody struggle for Sudan itself - for freedom, safety and the possibility of love.
River Spirit illuminates a fraught and bloody reckoning with the history of a people caught in the crosshairs of imperialism. This is a powerful tale of corruption, coming of age and unshakeable devotion - to a cause, to one's faith and to the people who become family.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The action-packed latest from Aboulela (Bird Summons) turns on Sudan's religious civil war in the late 19th century. Akuany is 11 when raiders from the north of Sudan burn her village of Malakal to the ground. During the attack, Akuany and her younger brother, Bol, are kept safe by a merchant named Yaseen and the river, "the spirit of who she was." Akuany, Bol, and Yaseen then travel north to Al-Ubayyid, where Akuany is sold into slavery and renamed Zamzam, meaning "holy water" in Arabic. On the periphery, a fringe group believes their leader Muhammad Ahmed to be the Mahdi, an Islamic prophet who appears at the end of times to rid the world of evil and injustice. As the Mahdists overtake the country, claiming city after city, Yaseen—now a jurist for an Ottoman chief—must decide whether to falsely claim a zealot as a messiah or to deny him and face certain death, all while trying to figure out how to free Zamzam, whom he'd sworn to protect. Aboulela casts a scrutinous and perceptive eye on the motives of religious leaders and colonial forces, and she layers the narrative with a rich blend of languages and cultures. This brims with drama and nuance.
