The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter’s Memoir

by Aminatta Forna

An intimate and moving portrait of a family combined with an account of the events which swept through Africa in the post-independence period. Aminatta Forna's intensely personal history is a passionate and vivid account of an African childhood -- of an idyll that became a nightmare. As a child she witnessed the upheavals of post-colonial Africa, the bitterness of exile in Britain and the terrible consequences of her dissident father's stand against tyranny. Mohamed Forna, a man of unimpeachable integrity and great charisma, was a new star in the political firmament Sierra Leone as the country faced its future as a fledgling democracy. Always a political firebrand, he was one of the first black students to come to Britain after the war. In Aberdeen he stole the heart of Aminatta's mother, to the dismay of her Presbyterian parents, and returned with her to Sierra Leone. But the new ways of Western parliamentary democracy were tearing old Africa apart, giving rise only to dictatorships and corruption of hitherto undreamed-of magnitude. It was not long before Aminatta's father languished in jail as a prisoner of conscience, and there was worse to come. Aminatta's search for the truth that shaped both her childhood and the nation's destiny begins among the country's elite and takes her into the heart of rebel territory. Determined to break the silence surrounding her father's fate, she ultimately uncovered a conspiracy that penetrated the highest reaches of government and forced the nation's politicians and judiciary to confront their guilt.

Genres: Africa, Nonfiction, Memoir, Sierra Leone, Biography, Biography Memoir, History

403 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2002

About the author

Aminatta’s books have been translated into eighteen languages. Her essays have appeared in Freeman’s, Granta, The Guardian, LitHub, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, The Observer and Vogue. She has written stories for BBC radio and written and presented television documentaries including “The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu” (BBC Television, 2009) and “Girl Rising” (CNN, 2013).

Aminatta is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Folio Academy. She has acted as judge for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Bailey Prize for Women’s Fiction, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the Caine Prize and the International Man Booker Prize.

In 2003 Aminatta established the Rogbonko Project to build a school in a village in Sierra Leone. The charity has also run a number of projects in the spheres of adult education, sanitation and maternal health.

Aminatta is the recipient of a Windham Campbell Award from Yale University, has won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book Award 2011, a Hurston Wright Legacy Award the Liberaturpreis in Germany and the Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize. She has been a finalist for the Neustadt Prize for Literature, the Orange Prize for Fiction, the IMPAC Award and the Warwick Prize. Aminatta Forna was made OBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours 2017.

She is currently Lannan Visiting Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University and Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ours was a country of immeasurable beauty, at once full of promise yet riven with unknowable perils."



(Sierra Leone. Creative Commons image by Brian Harrington Spier)

There is something that African countries ridden with war (should I say all countries?) have in common: those signs of "early manifestations of tyranny: the end of the rule of law and the descent into anarchy." This was Aminatta Forna's father's concerns when he first saw those signs. A Sierra-Leone medical doctor trained in Scotland, Forna decided to join politics during the late 1960s and early 1970s, giving his loyalty to a man he thought would be a change agent. When it was clear the new leader only wanted more power, was corrupt in his business affairs, and did not want any of his advisors to challenge him, Mohamed Forna resigned from being Siaka Stevens' Minister of Finance. He was jailed for treason.

Things change drastically for his family and in this memoir Forna captures how it feels to be a young girl who witnesses the onset of cruelty, how it looks to have one's friends become one's enemies. As a woman, she returns to Sierra Leone, where she never truly felt accepted, to uncover truths about her father's political past through research. Born to a white mother, educated in Britain where she also fled for safety, she recalls fond memories of her black stepmother, comes to terms with abandonment from her real mother, and wrestles with being back in a village where her father was well-known and liked, but where he also was betrayed.

Read the history of war and you know how the spread of narcissism and hate results in mass shootings or violence; the tyrant and his loyalists try to restructure longstanding systems, they hire people to ignore the law, or in some cases, even change it. They try to alter the news and facts. They "set about jailing members of the opposition." They "refuse to condemn violence." The people around them "plead ignorance. How could they have stood up against what thy didn't even know was happening?" This was what Sierra Leone endured under the regime of Siaka Stevens, former prime minister and president of Sierra Leone and continued under the army-general-turned-president, Joseph Saidu Momoh.

This memoir, a daughter's personal mission to uncover the truth of her father's political imprisonment in Sierra Leone, culminates in the war that Beah writes about in A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Decades later, Sierra Leone (and Liberia) suffered from what was then the onset of war, what Forna outlines in this memoir.

What this memoir does well is detail those moments of rising chaos through a father's political involvement: midnight meetings, weekly disappearances, a group of young, resistance leaders who thought they were changing the world...and then the downward spiral, the encapsulation of greed and effects of inferiority complex. The displacement of a family, the fear, is made lucid; the true meaning of love and sacrifice showcased through the stepmother. Paragraphs meander through time and place, and one senses notes and memories have been pieced together to form a whole. Rich in history, you sense that this autobiography is meant not only to tell this family's story, but also to tell the story of Sierra Leone. For a memoir it is a feat; for autobiography it is illustrious. I'm glad to have read it in 2019.

[Chrissie · Rating 2 out of 5]

In 1974 when the author was ten, her father Mohamed Forna was arrested, taken from their home and accused of treason. On July 19, 1975, he and seven other Sierra Leonean dissidents were executed. He was a doctor by profession but had become involved in politics. Under the Government of the All People’s Congress (APC) he was Minister of Finance from 1968 – 1970. With growing disenchantment of Sjaka Stevens' leadership, rampant corruption and violence, he resigned. Between 1970 and 1973 he sat in prison. He worked to establish the United Democratic Party (UDP), an opposition party. It was banned.

Twenty-five years after her father’s arrest, the author began an investigation of his death. She studied transcripts from the trial and all that had been in the press. She interviewed trial witnesses. It is shown that many of the witnesses gave false testimony.

All of the above is covered in this book, but I found it difficult to follow. The telling flips between different time periods. Not all acronyms are clear. There is an excess of detail. Parts are long-winded. There are so many names; it is hard to keep track of who is who. Nor does it help that what people say is often false. So much lying and subterfuge! I am not talented at keeping such information straight.

The writing is for me too pretty. Other times too suspenseful. I do not want to be manipulated in a book of non-fiction; I want accuracy and clarity. In a book such as this, I am not looking for subjective prose. A book’s prose must match its subject matter. All too often I was struck by the thought that the prose felt out of place.

This book does not give you a biography of the author’s father. He died when she was still a child. One cannot claim that she knew him well. As a daughter clearly in love with her father, I am not sure we are given an unbiased view of him. Neither is this an autobiography—large swatches of the author’s life are hopped over. As a description of Sierra Leone history, it’s confusing. It seems to me that the author wrote this book primarily for herself—as a means of combating the demons of her own memories.

Adjoa Andoh narrates the audiobook. She flips between British, African and Scottish accents. Aminatta’s mother was a Scot. Her father, although born in Sierra Leone, was educated in England. The narrator reads some parts too quickly. On the whole, I would say it is not hard to follow. The narration I have given three stars. If you like dramatization of an audiobook, you might want to give it more stars than me.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The account I read was not the way I had imagined my father's trial at all. I imagined – well, what exactly? That the prosecution's case would have been much more ingenious, more inventive, I suppose. Instead there it was: seven volumes in which the end was written before the start, in which every word demonstrated a contempt for the truth that was brutal, undisguised and arrogant. My father had not been facing one man or even a government, but a system, an entire order, in which everyone from judge to juror knew their role.”

This book is Aminatta Forna’s memoir of her father, Dr. Mohamed Sorie Forna, former minister of finance in Sierra Leone, who was executed on trumped up charges of treason in 1975. Haunted by the past, she decided to reconstruct exactly what happened and why. She engaged relatives and tracked down people involved in order to discover the truth. In the process, she conveys the tortured history of Sierra Leone from the 1960s to 2000s.

The book is part childhood memoir, as the author was a child when her father was killed. I could almost feel her sense of anguish as I read it. She occasionally gets into more detail than perhaps was necessary for the reader, and I probably will not remember many of the names cited, but I am certain it was necessary for the author as she worked through such a personal traumatic experience. I have now read five books by Aminatta Forna, and I always enjoy the author’s elegant writing style.

“There are three words to denote the passing of time: today, tomorrow and yesterday. Everything else is viewed in relation to those three positions and extends only a few days in either direction, perhaps because life in rural Africa is so full of hazards that people prefer to live in the here and now rather than speculate on an uncertain future.”

[Calzean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I take my hat off to the author, her research abilities and her stylist writing. A sad memoir about her early life before the arrest of her father, Mohamed Forna, one-time Minister of Finance in Sierra Leonne who made the mistake of being too popular and too good in his job. The author then had to wait 30 years to be able to obtain the records of his trial and execution from US, UN, and many other sources.
Sierra Leone is a failed state and the author's upbringing in the 1970s was just at the start of a downward path of self-destruction driven by the greed for the proceeds from diamonds. Her father's trial was a joke as well as was how the International community shrugged their shoulders about the shenanigans of the President.
Also telling was the racism and bigotry the author saw and experienced in the UK.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book with absolutely no knowledge of its contents. 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 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 ...warfare at the time of her writing now over a decade ago. 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.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I admire her courage in investigating the heart-breaking sham trial and murder of her father in Sierra Leone, the writing style not so much. I thought the book needed an editor as I found her stream of consciousness and flipping back and forth in time disconcerting. I frequently had to reread passages to discover if she was in Scotland, Sierra Leone, or England. That said, a good addition to the literature on West Africa and Sierra Leone in particular.

[Bivisyani Questibrilia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't actually know anything about this book when I picked it up, but I recognised Aminatta Forna's name from another book I've been meaning to read. In hindsight, I feel I should've recognised her name far sooner through a different story. All I know is that this book tells the story of her memoir—of what and why, exactly, I had no clue. I prefer not to read the synopsis of a book upon buying it—and, most of the time, I pick up the right ones. Upon reading the preface/acknowledgement, I realised that the story is about her father, although still unclear in what respect.

The book starts out quite vaguely and goes on like that for two chapters—at the end of which, I was sure it would be a tearjerker—but starts again from the top in the third chapter. It starts with her father's past, her family's background (being told almost in a mythical way) and her older siblings' childhood, mixed with recollections of her own and a future reaction/statements of her relatives and friends. It is a story both personal and detached, collecting as much information as well as emotions to form a well-rounded picture, or at least attempt to. This effect perhaps comes from Ms. Forna's background in journalism but perhaps also from the twenty-five years of distance she allowed herself before diving into this subject matter.

The writing is very prosaic, in a way that makes you feel like you're transported straight to Sierra Leone to experience it all—sometimes I look up from the book to realise exactly where I am—though devoid of all the dramatisation such stories tend to have. Although hard to admit, I didn't actually know where or what Sierra Leone was before this book, but now I know a whole lot more than most people. While the story is focused on her father, as a memoir, it obviously cannot escape from the author's own point-of-view, which oftentimes is separated at long distance from her father—especially because she was a small child when most of it happened. This allows the readers to see other aspects of life for the Forna family as well as life for people in Sierra Leone. It dives into the matter of race, of class, of economy and of tribes. It gives a surprising glimpse of what it looks like to be a half-white African child or a white woman married to an African man, both in the UK and in Africa itself—and how it may differ significantly in Sierra Leone and in Nigeria.

Another thing I noticed is the similarities between the politics in Sierra Leone and my own country, Indonesia—possibly because both being the target of colonialism and developing countries. They both have a pivotal political moment in the '60s and the '90s. In the '60s the former government was replaced with a new regime, which quickly turned into a dictatorship of some kind. In the '90s this regime produced a riot of protesters—claiming to fight for change, although taking victims from fellow little people themselves. Is it possible that this was the result of colonialism? Perhaps it's because the local government only ever saw dictatorship and violence—as usually performed by the western invaders—be used as tools to lead a country? Is it possible that is the only way they knew how to govern?

If you want to pick up this book looking for answers, I would suggest you put it back down, because those are mostly not included in the book—only because they were not found in the author's real life as well. From the start the ending was written in scarlet letters, but I found myself wishing for a different outcome anyway—as did the author, probably. This book was published over a decade ago. Sierra Leone could be a whole lot different today. But it's still curious, why is this horrifying part of history has never made it into the mainstream media—or at least not so much that people would talk about it for decades, despite never lived there at all? At least, now I know about it.

[Melitta · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty good book about recent Sierra Leonean history. The author's father played an important role in S L government at the time of its transfer from British colonialism to self-rule, and according to Forna, everything he did was correct and upstanding, whereas all the others were corrupt, self-serving and basically, evil. I do not know enough detail about political historians' views of the 70s, 80s and 90s to know if this is correct or not. I do know that multiple attrocities were committed by several different self-declared leaders and opposition members. What is certain is that life was unbelievably difficult for almost all people in Sierra Leone.

Where this story is good is the parallel telling of the lives of both the author growing up in SL and the UK, and of her father. Since the author is of a similar age as myself, I enjoy and can identify with her frequent mention of cultural objects in the UK during her childhood. Many of these references will not be understood by American readers, but add spice for British ones. She shows very clearly how difficult it is to be half African and half white (in her case Scottish), in a zenophobic world. 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.

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.

[Irene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh my God this is literally like the most boring book I have ever read please can I give it 0 stars..? Honestly I think it was the narration I wasn't fond of here. I go back and forth between reading an actual book and listening in the car or before bedtime. This being a true story I believe it's remarkable that the author lived through this place in time and came out on the other side to tell the tale. I'd made the decision to give up on a book if there is nothing keeping me interested within the first half. Ever since making this decision I've found at least 3 books (one in particular ended up being one of my top favs of all time) that seemed to grab my attention RIGHT in the very mid-point of the story! So...I decided not to erase my initial reaction to the book but that may change at some point.

p.s. Note to self: this is the 500th book I've read since I began working at my local college library :)

I haven't yet decided if I am giving it 2, 2.5, 3 or even 3.5 stars. I'm going to let it sit with me for a bit then decide. Some movies and books I thought I didn't like at first ended up becoming a top read that I spent many hours thinking about after all. We will see what happens in this case. I doubt anyone has read my ramblings this late at night thus far but if you have please tell me..what shall my 501st book be? :0P Thanks!

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[BookOfCinz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid 3.5

The Devil That Danced On The Water: A Daughter's Quest, is about Aminatta Forna's father Dr. Mohammed Forna, a politician in Sierra Leone during the civil war. This is a hard book to review mainly because it is one part memoir and another part biography. The writer is very close to the issue presented and it is clear that she really did her due diligence.

I knew very little about Sierra Leone's prickly history, so I appreciated that historical content. I got a great look into the country and its culture. I liked both the beginning of the novel and the end, I felt the middle was a bit jumbled and not presented properly. At the end, I did have a lot of unanswered questions, the top being "WHERE IS YOUR MOTHER?".

From reading this book, its clear that it was a hard book to write because there are so many things at play- the history of a country, the telling of a father's story from your memory and the memory of others along with your own history. Nonetheless, the book did a solid job of getting the story across.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 1964—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. In the first part of the book, Forna tells her story, using primarily her memory—and especially her descriptive language which evokes the child’s level of understanding—as well as bits of information gleaned as an adult—which becomes a device of suspense. She describes her life in a series of homes—9 in her first 6 years, with the continuity that her child’s brain imposed on what might seem damaging chaos. 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. There the children are advised not to mingle with “African children”—racism rearing its ugly head right in their family. Their father takes them back to Freetown to live with him and his new wife in a compound with extended family. She resents the “new mother”, but only at first.

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. He becomes Minister of Finance, boning up on economics and impressing leaders at IMF and the World Bank. But he’s disillusioned with the prime minister and eventually resigns because of corruption and power-grabbing. He’s involved in the founding of a new opposition party and is quickly jailed as a dissident. The children escape to Britain with the stepmother and go back to Sierra Leone when he’s released and comes to their school to get them. He’s been advised not to return as long as the current prime minister, clearly his enemy, is in power. He ignores that.

In the second part of the book, Aminatta Forna, married and comfortably settled in London, returns to Sierra Leone, in 1999 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 1974, 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. Violence didn’t just start when it spilled over from Liberia. Sierra Leone wasn’t the one ex-British African colony with a real democracy as it seemed when I first arrived in 1964.
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[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having worked extensively in Sierra Leone after the terrible civil war I found the insights into the period between Independence from Great Britain and the collapse of the country long regarded as a model colony, sad and fascinating. The greed of the coastal elites, the predatory relationship between the long established Lebanese and other trading families and the political elites, and the contempt in which the educated elite regarded the peoples of the interior, all comes through clearly in this book. Britain consciously modelled the legal and constitutional systems of Sierra Leone to try and protect the people of the interior from economic exploitation and cultural degradation and while this was obviously for deeply paternalistic reasons, there was a genuine desire to avoid the mistakes of other colonies. This two-tier country seems to have had built into its very political fabric the seeds of self-destruction that saw the brutality and slaughter that has made this tragic country infamous. I have only really worked with the people of the interior but have found them to be most wonderful people, deep hospitality and generosity and a profound sense of culture and deep rooted identity. The stoicism with which they conquered Ebola was humbling. I really felt Aminatta's pain and range of emotions towards her late father, his family and his friends. As a father of a "curious" daughter who has similarly had a hybrid existence in and out of Africa, this gave me much cause for reflection as to the legacy we leave our children and how they view the choices we make.

[Sokari Ekine · Rating 5 out of 5]

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. 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 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.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir focusing on Aminatta Forna's childhood in Sierra Leone and Scotland and her research into her father's fate is beautifully written and often very moving. Born in Scotland and spending her childhood constantly moving around from one country to another she shows a child's resilience and simple acceptance when you know no other way to live. The details of how her parents met, her and her family's lives during a ten-year period with new schools and homes, a large extended family, and the myriad social and cultural elements of Sierra Leone are endlessly interesting. At the same time, we learn about the politics of the country, the rise of Siaka Stevens and her father's role as finance minister, how corruption and manipulation soon followed in a Western style democracy that is alien to the culture and could only inevitably lead to disaster.

The chapters where she is a child are captivating and the momentum is maintained by not having too many chapters about the politics one after the other and instead moving back and forth between Sierra Leone and her childhood in Great Britain. One minute she is making snow angels and taking part in a school play, the next she is back in Sierra Leone realizing that all is not well but not really grasping the facts until she is much older.

In the last third of the novel Aminatta Forna comes back to Sierra Leone after twenty-five years to attempt to find out the truth and Sierra Leone has erupted into chaos and anarchy with the rebels and the infamous child soldiers terrorizing and mutilating the population, poverty rife and UN peacekeepers installed. She continually comes up against obstacles as she attempts to find the men who were involved in her father's fate but gradually a picture emerges of how many lies, threats and torture were involved so that the government could obtain the result they desired.

Over the past decade I've read a couple of Aminatta Forna's novels and really enjoyed both of them. This memoir reads like fiction in the way it is written but is very much an education in the politics and history of Sierra Leone over a certain period in time. It was eye opening and heart breaking and highly recommended.

'It was strange how every new piece of knowledge served to wipe my mind and leave me devoid of feeling. I had wanted to know and yet the knowledge seemed to defeat me. It was like a virus running through my body: it left me weak and helpless. I had wanted to know, but I had never paused to consider what effect knowing might have upon me.'

[Sookie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled to keep up with the author. While I like the setting and being a memoir, the devastating times the author was in and the sham of a trial that their father was subjected to.

However my issue was purely with writing (I believe it was same problem in their earlier work: The memory of love), where I kept getting lost with setting and perspectives.

The underlying story is that of despair and a daughter's quest to find out the truth.

[Harry Rutherford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aminatta Forna’s father was a doctor, then activist and politician in Sierra Leone, rising to be Minister of Finance for a while before resigning in public protest at corruption in the government. 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.

After that Forna moved to the UK permanently, but even before that she had moved frequently between Sierra Leone and the UK according to her father’s fluctuating political fortunes. That in itself would be an interesting subject for a memoir, of course, a mixed race girl with a childhood split between the UK and Africa in the 60s and 70s; but inevitably her father’s story dominates the book, and the second half is the story of her return to Sierra Leone decades later to learn as much as she can about the details of her father’s trial.

I’ve actually been putting off reading this book because it sounded a bit depressing. But once again it reinforces the basic truth: my enjoyment in books is much more dependent on the quality of the writing than the subject matter. I got pleasure from reading this book, despite everything, because it is very well written. The childhood stuff particularly; she’s good at capturing the limited understanding of a small child caught up in a complicated, adult situation.

I thought the second part, her return to Sierra Leone as an adult to investigate her father’s trial, was less interesting. Just because it’s incredibly predictable, really. It was a political show trial organised by a dictator, and it followed the familiar pattern: forced confessions, a jury stuffed with political partisans, a cowed judiciary, ‘witnesses’ motivated by self-interest or fear, the accused denied access to a lawyer. Of course I can understand why Forna felt driven to find answers, but whereas her account of her childhood is full of individual, unique details, the second part just feels weirdly like you’ve read it before. Still interesting, still worth reading, but not as engaging as the first part.

Anyway, here’s a little extract, from a period when her father is in prison and she is living in London with her stepmother and her siblings.

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. Sometimes I’d stand there until train after train had gone by, eyes closed, amassing wishes. 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. At Christmas, if I found the silver sixpence Mum hid in the pudding, I wished for my father’s freedom. I wished for nothing else.

As time went on I increased my challenges: to reach the end of the road with my eyes closed without bumping into anyone or anything; to leap every other paving stone, dancing between them, promising myself that if I could make it ten yards, or twelve, or fifteen, I would somehow, miraculously earn his freedom. gradually I upped the ante: I’d work my bike up to speed then aim the front wheel at a pothole or a speed bump. If I don’t fall off, if I can stay in the saddle, then they’ll let him out of prison. 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.

[...]

There’s a good reason exile was once used as a punishment. 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. Exile is a war of attrition on the soul, it’s a slow punishment, and it works.

The Devil That Danced on the Water is my book from Sierra Leone for the Read The World challenge. Incidentally, although this book is clearly about the politics of a particular country, the name of that country doesn’t appear on the cover once: there are four references to ‘Africa’ and none to Sierra Leone. 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.

[Shalini · Rating 4 out of 5]

It would have been yet another memoir, but what makes it powerful is the attempt to find salve for her wounds from her father’s death in the hands of a dictatorial regimen. It brings Sierra Leone to life, the beautiful Krio phrases are one of the many delights of this book.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ms. 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.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

forna's bio and chronicle of her investigation into her father's disappearance/murder by the ruling regime (just before RUP exploded and started cutting off hands, selling blood diamonds, giving drugs to their child soldiers etc) in sierra leone. aminatta is daughter of mohamad forna (scottish trained md, and past finance minister to sierra leone) and scottish mom. mom bailed about when aminatta was 8 or so, never to really enter back into her childrens' or husband's lives.
so this book really is rather too long, micro-detailing what a bitch it is to grow up in Aberdeen, part sierra leonese, also what a disaster it is too grow up in sierra leone. then things start going down hill with hmm i can;t remember the particular dictator who wrangled the democratic and fairly successful country away from the people and did the fairly typical klepto/anarcho gig, with uk, china, usa, ussr all sticking their dirty paws in to not be very helpful.. forna has since written some stunning novels her most recent from 2013 about croatia The Hired Man
this intense bi/autobio good for getting coldwar period history of world and sierra leone.

[Denise Ervin · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 post-colonial world gives voice to generations who have suffered silently and it is a necessary narrative in human history.

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story provides a lot of detail regarding Aminata's life mostly in Sierra Leone during on-going civil war in SL which I thought might get tedious, but didn't for the large part. This could have been accomplished only by a very skillful writer. However, it did devolve during the last few chapters of the book with all the details of her father's political career and his undoing. Focusing on her feelings of being caught between two worlds (SL and Scotland - her mother was Scottish) would have added a welcome dimension. And what ever happened to her mother? She seemed to disappear completely after her father assumed custody.

[Chris Annear · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 of political self-destruction.

[Amy Heap · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 memoir that, I suspect, will stay with me for a long time.

[kenyanbooklover · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[agua · Rating 5 out of 5]

um. i feel ridiculously connected to the protagonist and her life experiences,, also i'm so mad. so tired. things could've been different. they could be

"i had the map in my hand and i was in the act of agreeing a price for it, haggling in a mixture of creole and english, when i heard a series of sharp cracks, like the sound of burning bamboo splitting in the heat of the fire. the stallholder heard it too. he looked from left to right and without a word he disappeared, ducking out of sight behind his stall. the crackling sounded a second time. somewhere in the back of my brain i dimly recognised the sound. i had heard it before somewhere. behind a voice, distantly over a telephone wire. gunfire! the strange thing was how silently we all ran. no one screamed. people rushed up the hill towards state house, young men, women carrying babies; vendors left their display boxes by the kerb, children scattered. a poda poda had lurched to a stop and the passengers burst out of the back doors. one man dived through the passenger-seat window, was momentarily stuck half in, half out, and then scrambled to freedom. i ran a few yards and then veered sharply to my right, down the side of the booths. i saw a hairdresser's shop and headed for the door. i turned to look for morlai. i caught sight of him running up the street, hemmed in by the crowd, his head turning frantically from side to side as he sought me. 'morlai!' morlai saw me and struggled to break free of the mass. i reached out my hand, searching for his. i grasped his hand and pulled him bodily out of the crowd. 'it's all right! it's all right!' said morlai – he was grinning suddenly. the stampede had stopped, people were standing around. i heard laughter. 'it's the electricity,' explained morlai, panting, pointing at the overhead wires. we walked back a few paces and looked down the street. a broken electric cable danced on the road, crackling and sending up showers of sparks like a firework. the man who had leapt from the window of the minibus stood nearby. he was young, lanky and dressed in jeans and gold chains; now he looked sheepish. my heart was still beating fast. people began to tease each other, falling about, laughing hard, too hard. a woman next to me in a tight tamula and lappa shrieked at the sight of the map seller as he re-emerged from beneath his stall. her neck was taut and knotted with veins as she pushed her face forward. her laugh was shrill and unending, a cascade of discordant notes."

[Florence Marfo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to read this book because I wanted to know more about the history of Sierra Leone. This memoir fulfilled this quest and offered much more by way of insight into the country’s politics from pre-independence. Whilst reading the book, particularly the passages relating to Aminatta’s quest for the truth behind her father’s imprisonment and conviction of treason, I questioned the degree to which a daughter’s memoir can ever by truly objective, and concluded that it is this very subjectivity that makes it a heartfelt account and rightfully entitled a memoir.
On the one hand we learn of the privilege inherent in having an African father who was schooled in the West – the lifestyle that Aminatta takes for granted, but that is not typical for your average Sierra Leonean child of the 1960s/70s - and the close African father-child relationship which shatters some of the stereotypes of the African father as autocratic and emotionally distant from his children.
Overall I would describe the memoir as particularly insightful in terms of mixed raced relationships of the 1960s/70s in the UK and Sierra Leone and the necessary emanating cultural versatility, not only of living in Scotland, Nigeria, (London, England) and Sierra Leone, but also of the uniqueness and/or otherness of these experiences: after her divorce, Aminatta’s mother lives in a caravan in Scotland rather than her parent’s home because of her father’s disapproval of her marriage to a black man. And when Aminata move to Nigeria with her mother, the latter instils in her superiority to African children because of her mixed race heritage.
I was left with questions, however: Did Aminatta’s biological mother ever get in touch after Dr Mohamed Forna’s assassination; how did Aminatta’s relationsip with her step mother Yabome progress; how could the ‘few thousand pounds set aside for our schooling’ p.398 have paid for boarding school for three children in the UK; and curiosity about Yabome, aware that if events had been different, Dr Forna may have left her for his new love interest Adelaide Dworzak.
The book reads well, although some of the transitions from Sierra Leone past and present and from Sierra Leone to the UK are a little unclear. The book is a coming of age / a loss of innocence of both a country and a daughter.

[Kate M · Rating 3 out of 5]

I related to Aminatta's experience in one small way, and that was living between the UK and Afric as a child. That was as far as it went and the whole experience of living in a very politically Unstable country, Sierra Leone in the 70's) must have been a scary and unsettling experience for the family.

Briefly the story is - Aminatta's dad is chosen in his family to go to the UK to train to be a doctor. He meets a Scottish lady who he marries and after he has trained she comes to Africa to live. They have 3 children but his wife can't cope with the cultural contrast and leaves the children with Mohammed and returns to the UK. Mohammed marries an Africa lady who Aminatta initially doesn't get on with, but then forms a strong bond with, all the children call her mum. Mohammed is very political and gives up being a doctor and ultimately becomes the Minister of Finance in Sierra Leone. What follows is his rise and fall with a leader of Sierra Leone who gets rid of people at a whim. The stories of torture and imprisonment to get those being tortured to sign at statement that tells what those in power want are pretty awful.

Aminetta goes back to Sierra Leone to find out exactly what happened to her father and eventually finds this out. The last few pages of the book are pretty sobering as she tells what it must have been like for her father living on Death Row and the last few hours/days of his life and as she comes to terms with with his death 'Honor and shame from no condition rise; act well your part: there all the Honor lies.' From an essay on Man, Alexander Pope (1733)

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this memoir. It was very moving, engaging and informative about the recent history of Sierra Leone, a country I knew nothing about. Forna is a gifted writer, and I look forward to reading her novels. This memoir was written to honor her father's memory and to put closure to the events and people surrounding his death.

Part I plunges us into Forna's quixotic childhood in Africa, Scotland and London. The chronology is scattered, which can be confusing for the reader, who yearns to know where she is at what age. All we can gather is that most of the first part she is age 0-10. We meet a host of characters important to her life, mostly family (including extended) but also family friends and employees who helped raise her and her siblings. I found the gorgeous use of language, stream of consciousness and even a bit of magic realism extremely enticing. All this and a decidedly compelling story.

Part II deals with the adult Aminatta's search for the truth of her father's mysterious death. Riddled with names and places, I found the writing quite tedious for the most part, with exciting plot-driven breaks in the monotony now and then. To be fair, I believe this author to be more at home in fiction writing, though this memoir with all her research is a tribute to her much beloved father and her only way of memorializing him. I think she has succeeded. By the end of her searching she has managed to appreciate the beauty of her country and its people amidst the horror and political violence.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aminatta’s Scottish mother met her Sierra Leonean future husband Mohamed Forna while he was a medical student studying in Britain. He’d always planned to return to his native land to help his fellow countrymen.
And with wife and small children in tow, he did exactly that. But he soon found that healing the bodies of his countrymen was not enough. And so, as colonialism was ending in Sierra Leone, he threw his political fortunes in with the All People’s Congress (APC) led by Sjaka Stevens.

Forma served as Minister of Finance in Stevens’s new government. However, the new government was plagued by political coups and disention, and quickly devolved into corruption and violence. Forma resigned in protest. He soon became an outspoken critic of Stevens’ plan to form an autocratic one party government.
Eventually Forma was arrested on false charges, imprisoned, tortured, and convicted by false testimony of other torture victims. He was tried, condemned and executed.

This is the story that his daughter Aminatta tells of returning to Sierra Leone decades later and trying to put together the pieces of her father’s life. It’s a story of reconciling her childhood memories with a story of corruption and lies during a failed attempt at democracy.

I found this memoir well written and page turning. Besides being an insightful look at a post colonial African nation, it also has lessons for current democracies as they struggle to preserve their freedoms.