Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020

Captured, abducted and married into Boko Haram, the narrator of this story witnesses and suffers the horrors of a community of men governed by a brutal code of violence. Barely more than a girl herself, she must soon learn how to survive as a woman with a child of her own. Just as the world around her seems entirely consumed by madness, bound for hell, she is offered an escape of sorts - but only into another landscape of trials and terrors amidst the unforgiving wilds of northeastern Nigeria, through the forest and beyond; a place where her traumas are met with the blinkered judgment of a society in denial. How do we love in a world that has lost its moorings? How can we comprehend the barbarism of our enemies and learn forgiveness for atrocities committed in the name of ideology?

Sheila Atim

Voice