Books written by Aminatta Forna

  • Ancestor Stones: A Novel
    Ancestor Stones: A Novel

    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 ...

  • Happiness: A Novel
    Happiness: A Novel

    In this delicate tale of love and loss, of thoughtless cruelty and unexpected community, Aminatta Forna asks us to consider our co-existence with one another and all living creatures, and the true nature of happiness.

  • The Memory of Love
    The Memory of Love

    The Memory of Love is a beautiful and ambitious exploration of the influence history can have on generations, and the shared cultural burdens that each of us inevitably face. “A soft-spoken story of brutality and endurance set in postwar ...

  • The Memory of Love
    The Memory of Love

    The Memory of Love is a heartbreaking story of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

  • The Memory of Love
    The Memory of Love

    The Memory of Love is a heartbreaking story of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

  • The Hired Man: A Novel
    The Hired Man: A Novel

    An award-winning Scottish and Sierra Leonean novelist “brilliantly portrays the atmosphere” of Croatia in this haunting tale of war, history, and secrets (The Guardian).

  • The BBC National Short Story Award 2010
    The BBC National Short Story Award 2010

    Featuring the five short-listed stories for the BBC National Short Story Award, this collection brings together a high-caliber group of new and established British authors exploring human relationships at their most dysfunctional and yet ...

  • The Devil that Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Memoir of Her Father, Her Family, Her Country and a Continent
    The Devil that Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Memoir of Her Father, Her Family, Her Country and a Continent

    Aminatta Forna's intensely personal history is a passionate and vivid account of an idyllic childhood that became the stuff of nightmare.

  • The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion
    The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion

    Deeply meditative and written with a wry humor, The Window Seat confirms that Forna is “a compelling essayist . . . her voice direct, lucid, and fearless” (Claire Messud, Harper’s Magazine).

  • The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest
    The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest

    The Devil That Danced on the Water is an “extremely moving” memoir of family, heritage, and innocence lost (The Guardian).

  • The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion
    The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion

    "Aminatta Forna is one of our most important literary voices, and her novels have won the Windham Campbell Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book.