The Book Of Echoes

The Book Of Echoes

An astonishing debut. 'Impassioned. Lyrical and affecting' GUARDIAN

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA DEBUT CROWN AWARD

As featured on Graham Norton's Book Club

Narrated by the soul of an enslaved African woman, this is a searing debut novel about hope, redemption and the scars of history

Over two hundred years ago in Africa, a woman tosses her young son to safety as she is hauled away by slavers. After a brutal sea passage, her second child, a baby girl, is snatched away. Although the woman doesn't know it yet, her spirit is destined to roam the earth in search of her lost children.

Her spirit will make its way to modern-day England, where she watches teenage Michael trying to stay out of trouble as riots spit and boil on the streets of Brixton, and to a sun-baked village in Nigeria, where Ngozi struggles to escape her low-caste status.

As the invisible threads that draw these two lives together are pulled ever tighter, The Book of Echoes asks: how can we overcome the traumas of the past when they are woven so inextricably with the present? Humming with horror and beauty, Rosanna Amaka's remarkable debut marks her as a vibrant new voice in fiction.

'A searing, rhapsodic novel' IRENOSEN OKOJIE

© Rosanna Amaka 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Reviews

  • BEST NEW FICTION: A beautifully written testament to oppression that reverberates across the centuries.
    DAILY MAIL

About the author

Rosanna Amaka

Rosanna Amaka was born in the UK and is of African and Caribbean heritage. Her debut novel, The Book of Echoes, was shortlisted for the Authors' Club First Novel Award, the RSL Christopher Bland Prize and the HWA Debut Crown Award. Rose and the Burma Sky is her second novel and was inspired by a conversation with her grandmother while they were watching a war film in which all the soldiers were white. Rosanna lives in London. Meet her on Twitter @RosannaAmaka
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