A NATIONAL BESTSELLER ΓÇ£Superb. . . . A celebration of a place and time when people held onto their own ways,and basked in ordinary joys even as outside forces conspired to take them away.ΓÇ¥ ΓÇöNew York Times From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literaturea sweepingmulti-generational saga of displacementlossand loveset against the brutal colonization of east Africa. When he was just a boyIlyas was stolen from his parents on the coast of east Africa by German colonial troops. After years awayfighting against his own peoplehe returns home to find his parents gone and his sisterAfiyaabandoned into de facto slavery. Hamzatooreturns home from the warscarred in body and soul and with nothing but the clothes on his backΓÇôuntil he meets the beautifulundaunted Afiya. As these young people live and work and fall in lovetheir fates knotted ever more tightly togetherthe shadow of a new war on another continent falls over themthreatening once again to carry them away.