3.5
Ancestor Stones
ByPublisher Description
From the award-winning author: A “wonderfully ambitious” novel of West Africa, told through the struggles and dreams of four extraordinary women (The Guardian).
When a cousin offers Abie her family’s plantation in the West African village of Rofathane in Sierra Leone, she leaves her husband, children, and career in London to reclaim the home she left behind long ago. With the help of her four aunts—Asana, Mariama, Hawa, and Serah—Abie begins a journey to uncover the past of her family and her home country, buried among the neglected coffee plants.
From rivalries between local chiefs and religious leaders to arranged marriages, manipulative unions, traditional desires, and modern advancements, Abie’s aunts weave a tale of a nation’s descent into chaos—and their own individual struggles to claim their destiny.
Hailed by Marie Claire as “a fascinating evocation of the experience of African women, and all that has been gained—and lost—with the passing of old traditions,” Ancestor Stones is a powerful exploration of family, culture, heritage, and hope.
“This is [Forna’s] first novel, but it is too sophisticated to read like one.” —The Guardian
When a cousin offers Abie her family’s plantation in the West African village of Rofathane in Sierra Leone, she leaves her husband, children, and career in London to reclaim the home she left behind long ago. With the help of her four aunts—Asana, Mariama, Hawa, and Serah—Abie begins a journey to uncover the past of her family and her home country, buried among the neglected coffee plants.
From rivalries between local chiefs and religious leaders to arranged marriages, manipulative unions, traditional desires, and modern advancements, Abie’s aunts weave a tale of a nation’s descent into chaos—and their own individual struggles to claim their destiny.
Hailed by Marie Claire as “a fascinating evocation of the experience of African women, and all that has been gained—and lost—with the passing of old traditions,” Ancestor Stones is a powerful exploration of family, culture, heritage, and hope.
“This is [Forna’s] first novel, but it is too sophisticated to read like one.” —The Guardian
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities18 Reviews
3.5
Reanne O'Sullivan
Created 9 months agoShare
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“Some of the most beautiful writing I've seen. Sometimes the narratives were a bit hard to follow, but the poetic writing style made up for it.”
lafemmelaflemme
Created about 1 year agoShare
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Faith Nzama
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Tawallah
Created about 1 year agoShare
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“Ancestor Stones is the debut novel of Aminatta Forna which is loosely based on Sierra Leone. Told in the voice of four cousins - Asana, Hawa, Seraph and Mariama - the author paints a tale that illustrates both their viewpoint and that of the times in which they lived. This was best told as a loosely inter-connected short stories from childhood to old age.
In the rural homeland of Rofathane, a coffee plantation, the patriarch Gibli Kholifa acquires eleven wives by time of his death. It is from four of these wives that our narrators arise. Asana is the daughter of the first wife, Seraph from the tenth wife with a scandalous past, Hawa from a favorite wife and Mariama(Mary) from the third wife Sakkie. It is through their eyes, the readers learn more about the turmoil that exists in the 1920s-1930s, 1950s, 1980s and then in 1996-8 with the resulting civil war. It is a family saga but it seen through the lens of limited role that women played as well as a longer view of their country. The story is rich in the ways that women learn to deal with grief, jealousy, bad marriages, betrayal but also their interaction with religion, racism and colonialism.
Though much of the book may seem stereotypical at times, there is a refreshing honesty that arises from these tales being passed onto a new generation. The beauty lies in having this kind of story written where characters struggle with all that life throws at them with quite limited resources. As events move towards the civil war and its violence, the author chooses not to linger on the violence per se but on its sudden nature to those living through the events, the aftermath of understanding the logic of why and the future for that family.
A love letter to women especially the older generation who chose to forge a path for their happiness but in the end learned to accept who they were. They were shaped by their mothers and the place of their childhood.”
About Aminatta Forna
Aminatta Forna is the author of the novels Ancestor Stones, The Memory of Love, and The Hired Man, as well as the memoir The Devil That Danced on the Water. Forna's books have been translated into sixteen languages. Her essays have appeared in Granta, The Guardian, The Observer, and Vogue. She is currently the Lannan Foundation Chair in Poetics at Georgetown University.
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