Michela Wrong

When words fail

Ignore the title, with its subliminal echoes of Mills & Boon.

issue 08 May 2010

Ignore the title, with its subliminal echoes of Mills & Boon. Aminatta Forna’s magnificent second novel is not really about love. Its themes are far grittier, and all the more compelling for it: war, loss, and how a society emerging from civil strife must reinvent its own history, fabricating a tolerable narrative in order to remain semi sane.

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