The Water Daughter

At the end of the s, on the brink of his political career, he was warned by the powerful politician who would be his nemesis that he had perhaps spent too much time in England. Dr Forna, he said, had failed to understand that in Africa, "politics and violence were inseparable". Extreme orchestrated violence was already the norm of the two dominant political parties in Sierra Leone.

Coups, arrests, exile and more violence followed. For Aminatta, the youngest of his three children, Dr Forna was the adored and attentive Daddy who commanded her total loyalty through the family and political upheavals that dragged her through nine homes in six years. In the first half of the book she conveys vividly both the joy of her life with her parents in small-town Sierra Leone on the cusp of independence, and the cold years in a caravan park in Scotland, followed by a boarding school in England. In Freetown she lived in an extended family, keeping company with cooks who told endless stories.

She evokes this life with a true eye for description of a vanished world. The girls' boarding school, where her best friend casually told her that she could not invite Aminatta to her party because her father "doesn't like blacks", was a terrible place for a child living with loneliness and incomprehension. D onald Campbell began using his father's old boat Bluebird K4 to set his own records, but after it suffered a structural failure at mph in he developed the K7.

My mind just went to nothing. It was always the reward that counted and not the risk. We urge you to turn off your ad blocker for The Telegraph website so that you can continue to access our quality content in the future. Visit our adblocking instructions page. Home News Sport Business. For Campbell speed ran in the family.

We've noticed you're adblocking. It seems she was much more accepted in SL than in the UK, but that may be because in SL she was seen as the daughter of an important man, and also she was definitely in the richer and educated echelon of society there. She tried extremely hard to find the truth of her father's final situation, but frustratingly for her, and somewhat so for us, there is no final "truth". She does give a reasonable account of some of the atrocious torture of ordinary people in SL, but perhaps not quite as well as some other African authors, maybe because much of her accounting is second hand, and she was a young girl when most of these enprisonments occurred.

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The last third of the book focused on her return to SL as an adult, in search of answers, and I found that part the least compelling part of the book. I thought her memories of her childhood, and the early years of her father's life were more interesting and better developed. Still, this is a book I would recommend to people who are interested in recent African history. Aug 27, Laura rated it it was amazing. I picked up this book with absolutely no knowledge of its contents.

Dad Tricks Daughter with Water Prank

Having read one of Forna's works of fiction previously, I was expecting a novel. In my blissful ignorance, I think I encountered one of the best written works I have read with elements of the auto-biographical and investigative journalism genres at their best. This is her real life story, of her British-educated Sierra Leonean father and his incredible passion for a country with so much potential, yet destroyed by greed corrupti I picked up this book with absolutely no knowledge of its contents.

This is her real life story, of her British-educated Sierra Leonean father and his incredible passion for a country with so much potential, yet destroyed by greed corruption and hatred. Her years as a child in Africa are immersed in bliss and magical events seen through the eyes of a child slowly turning into the toughest pages of Sierra Leone's history. Interwoven in her experiences are memories of England, Scotland, Lagos and at the forefront stands Sierra Leone with its beautiful beaches and forests and Retracing all of her father's steps, and matching his last ten years of life up with some of her most intimate memories of her first ten years on earth, Forna seeks clarity on the circumstances of her father's murder.

In the process she enables the reader to understand why Sierra Leone is what it is today, seeds of a country falling into anarchic abyss already sown at the time of her childhood there. A brilliant piece of writing. Jun 16, Hugh rated it it was amazing Shelves: A devastating but beautifully written memoir of a childhood in Sierra Leone and Britain, and the rise and fall of her father Mohamed Forna, a finance minister in the Sierra Leone government.

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But she was born in Scotland to a Scottish mother while her father was studying medicine there. Unfortunately politics in Sierra Leone was a dangerous business. We learn at the very start of the book that, when she was ten, her father was arrested and she never saw him again, but exactly what happened to him emerges over the course of the book, so even though it is in fact a matter of historical record, I suppose the polite thing to do is to issue a MILD SPOILER ALERT before I go on to talk about it. So, as I was saying, her father along with fourteen other men was arrested and charged on trumped-up charges of treason, inevitably found guilty, and hanged.

They had supposedly been conspiring to blow up a government minister — an explosion at his house did take place but appears to have been staged for the purpose. But once again it reinforces the basic truth: I got pleasure from reading this book, despite everything, because it is very well written.

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It was a political show trial organised by a dictator, and it followed the familiar pattern: Still interesting, still worth reading, but not as engaging as the first part. I used to walk down a road, any road, and say to myself: If I can just hold my breath until I get to the end of this street Daddy will be released from prison. Or, if I was crossing a bridge and a train went underneath, I wished my father would be freed. Three times over three years, as I cut the first slice of cake, I used my special birthday wish so I could have him back.

I wished on the full moon and the new moon, and then any moon at all. I wished for nothing else. As time went on I increased my challenges: Alone in the flat one afternoon I stood in the galley kitchen passing my hand as slowly as I dared across the ice-blue flame of the gas ring, once, twice, thrice, until the smell, like burnt bacon rinds, rose from the scorched ends of my fingernails. It is life apart, life on hold, life in waiting.

You may begin full of strength and hope, or just ignorance, but it is time, nothing more than the unending passage of time that wears down your resilience, like the drip of a tap that carves a groove in the granite below. I know that we have an unfortunate tendency to lump all of sub-Saharan Africa into one entity, but you might hope that the publisher would make some sort of effort even if no-one else does. Sep 09, Andrea rated it it was amazing.

Forna memoir of her childhood in Sierra Leone is beyond harrowing. She wrote an important book about Africa and gratitude is in order. I learned more than I wanted about betrayal and political jockeying that I could bear. That she was able to gather her elegance, wits and grace about her in this tragic ugly tale is quite remarkable. Jan 15, Susan rated it it was amazing. This book has been compared to Wild Swans for the childhood memories and to The House of the Spirits for the dissident political stuff.

Quite apart from my personal interest in the subject I was a Peace Corps teacher in Freetown a few years before the events in this book , I found it a sensitive memoir in which the writer is superb at rendering childhood memories of her parents' two cultures as well as an amazing personal journey during which she uses her investigative journalistism skills This book has been compared to Wild Swans for the childhood memories and to The House of the Spirits for the dissident political stuff. Quite apart from my personal interest in the subject I was a Peace Corps teacher in Freetown a few years before the events in this book , I found it a sensitive memoir in which the writer is superb at rendering childhood memories of her parents' two cultures as well as an amazing personal journey during which she uses her investigative journalistism skills to uncover the truth she had never really knew before about her father.

Aminatta Forna was born in Scotland in —Scottish mother and father, a medical student from Sierra Leone. She was the youngest of 3 children born to the couple before they went back to Sierra Leone where Mohamed Forna wanted to use his skills to help his fledgling country. When the family goes back to Sierra Leone her father first works for the main hospital in Freetown, then for the Army and then establishes a clinic in Koindu, an upcountry town in the diamond-mining area. It is there that he gets involved in politics and that the tensions between her parents first becomes apparent.

They separate and the children go back to Scotland with their mother, where they live in a caravan while the mother goes to school. The mother later marries a New Zealand diplomat and takes the children to Nigeria where he is stationed. Their father takes them back to Freetown to live with him and his new wife in a compound with extended family.

In the meantime, Dr. Forna wins an election but is not allowed to take his seat until one military coup blocks an earlier military coup and returns civilian rule to the winning party. In the second part of the book, Aminatta Forna, married and comfortably settled in London, returns to Sierra Leone, in still in the grip of the revolution that plunged it to last place on the UN register of livable countries with more double amputees than anywhere else in the world.

She uses her kills as a journalist to investigate what really happened to her father in , the truth of which is much more difficult to assimilate personally than she expected, but which paints a more complex picture of the relationship between politics and violence in Africa than even an account of the recent revolution. The book begins when she is 10 years old on the day her father was taken away never to be seen again by his family.

Ms Forna then returns to her beginnings in Scotland and then on to life in the Forna family in Sierra Leone running parallel with the violent politics of post colonial Africa - coups, counter coups, deception, bribery, lies, torture a The book is a memoir of her father Dr Mohammed Forna, a Sierra Leone politician, who was executed by the government of Shaka Stevens of Sierra Leone. Ms Forna then returns to her beginnings in Scotland and then on to life in the Forna family in Sierra Leone running parallel with the violent politics of post colonial Africa - coups, counter coups, deception, bribery, lies, torture and murder through to the horrendous years of civil war and child solidiers.

Aminatta writes with a childish innocence and an adult maturity borne out of the pain of watching her father, her country and her world disintegrate into many pieces but also with the strenth to seek out and reveal the truth. Jun 18, Denise Ervin rated it it was amazing. This story is at once a political thriller, a historical text, and a biography. Aminatta Forna manages to skillfully weave her father's personal journey with her own, giving the reader an experience that is as painful as it is poignant.

This Sierra Leonean journalist makes the harrowing journey from the daugher of a prominent physician and political leader to defending his legacy and name in the wake of his execution as a traitor, educating as she entertains. This tale of personal tragedy in a p This story is at once a political thriller, a historical text, and a biography. This tale of personal tragedy in a post-colonial world gives voice to generations who have suffered silently and it is a necessary narrative in human history.

Nov 09, Amy Heap rated it really liked it Shelves: I knew almost nothing of Sierra Leone before I read this book, despite the fact that I know there are people in my town who had to leave it. This was one of those books that had me running to the Internet to find out more about the country, the food, the culture.

It is a sad story about a post-colonial country trying to find its political feet. Mohamed Forna, the author's father, was a man of great integrity, who loved his country and gave his all for its people. It is a beautifully written memo I knew almost nothing of Sierra Leone before I read this book, despite the fact that I know there are people in my town who had to leave it. It is a beautifully written memoir that, I suspect, will stay with me for a long time.

The truth about Daddy

Dec 31, Chris Annear rated it it was amazing. This memoir tells an intimate story of growing up in Sierra Leone, including Forna's investigation into her father's execution by the Sierra Leonean government. Mohamed, Aminatta's father, was a former minister in Siaka Stevens' increasingly violent and clientelist administration. Overtime, he became an icon of political virtue and a major opposition figure, once he resigned from the cabinet,. This is a beautifully written book that slowly builds from a series of recollections to a painful saga This memoir tells an intimate story of growing up in Sierra Leone, including Forna's investigation into her father's execution by the Sierra Leonean government.

This is a beautifully written book that slowly builds from a series of recollections to a painful saga of political self-destruction. Dec 18, kenyanbooklover rated it it was amazing. One reviewer describes this book as "enormously compelling and painful reading". I couldn't agree more, as I found myself crying more than a few times. This book is pain and love and history. It's a daughter's quest to understand how and why her father was hanged by a government that wanted nothing more than to obliterate his existence.

It's Aminatta Forna's Sierra Leone. The country of her childhood, and the one the greed of a few big men did not permit her to experience.