Portland Public Library

River spirit, a novel, Leila Aboulela

eng

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novels

River spirit

1336986205

Leila Aboulela

a novel

"This enchanting and eye-opening new novel from Caine Prize winner Leila Aboulela follows an embattled young woman coming of age during the Mahdist War in nineteenth-century Sudan, and illuminates the tensions that shape her course: between Britain and Sudan, Christianity and Islam, colonizer and colonized. In River Spirit, Aboulela gives us the unforgettable story of a people who--against the odds and for a brief time--gained independence from foreign rule through their willpower, subterfuge, and sacrifice"--, Dust jacket flap1890s. When Akuany and her brother Bol are orphaned in a village raid in South Sudan, they are taken in by a young merchant Yaseen. His promise to care for them tethers him to Akuany through their adulthood. As a revolutionary leader rises to power-- the self-proclaimed Mahdi, prophesied redeemer of Islam-- Sudan begins to slip from the grasp of Ottoman rule, and everyone must choose a side. A scholar of the Qur'an, Yaseen feels beholden to stand against this false Mahdi, even as his choice splinters his family. Meanwhile, Akuany moves through her young adulthood and across the country alone, sold and traded from house to house, with Yaseen as her inconsistent lifeline. -- adapted from jacket