"Ethiopia doesn't matter to the West...we offer them nothing they can exploit."
Doesn’t look to closely at my photo of this book jacket because you will see that I only paid 50 cents for it at a library discards sale. The book is in relatively good shape…and is a great read so I’m not sure exactly why is was tossed. Perhaps they ordered too many copies for book clubs and whatnot.
My gain, at any rate.
Like I said, great read about Lilly, a girl who has hippie parents that travelled with her in tow. She ends up at a sufi shrine/school of sorts and the headmaster takes her in (parents die). She is raised in Islam culture and studies the Qu’ran along with the sufis.
She ends up going on a journey to Ethiopia from Morocco and staying for a few years. Living in extreme poverty, she begins to find her place in the world, even though there are many obstacles being a white ‘farenji’ young woman. She falls in love…always the biggest hurdle.
The storyline flips back and forth from past to present and the reader is kept hanging at each section’s ending. The past is a mystery that unfolds and tells us why Lilly is so unhappy in her present. Eventually she’ll get happier, keep reading.
This book was short-listed for the Giller Prize in 2005 and lost to The Time In Between by David Bergen. What a great year in books for Canada! This book also won the Trillium Book Award.
Funny thing about both books listed above – they only briefly mention Canada. Canadian writers are always writing about somewhere else. Notable.
My name is Britty and I'm chief bottle-washer at this site. I'm a book-lover, student and freelance writer when I'm not being a mom of three and wife of one.
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June 8th, 2010 on 8:15 am
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