Elsewhere, Home
4/5
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About this ebook
A young woman’s encounter with a former classmate elicits painful reminders of her former life in Khartoum. A wealthy young Sudanese woman studying in Aberdeen begins an unlikely friendship with one of her Scottish classmates. A woman experiences an evolving relationship to her favorite writer, whose portrait of their shared culture both reflects and conflicts with her own sense of identity.
Shuttling between the dusty, sun-baked streets of Khartoum and the university halls and cramped apartments of Aberdeen and London, Elsewhere, Home explores, with subtlety and restraint, the profound feelings of yearning, loss, and alienation that come with leaving one’s homeland in pursuit of a different life.
Leila Aboulela
Leila Aboulela was born in Cairo, grew up in Khartoum and moved to Aberdeen in her mid-twenties. She is the author of five novels, Bird Summons, The Translator, a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year, The Kindness of Enemies, Minaret and Lyrics Alley, Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. She was the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, and her short story collection, Elsewhere, Home, won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages and she was longlisted three times for the Orange Prize for Fiction (now the Women’s Prize). Her plays The Insider, The Mystic Life and others were broadcast on BBC Radio, and her fiction included in publications such as Freeman’s, Granta and Harper’s Magazine.
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Reviews for Elsewhere, Home
7 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amazing to read as always, Leila is one of my fav author
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5While I've enjoyed earlier books by this author, I've never been blown away by them, and that pattern continues with her latest release. It's a collection of short stories, most of them set in either Scotland or the Sudan, and most of them focusing on Scottish and Sudanese couples. A young man flies to the Sudan to meet his fiancé's family. An engaged young woman, having trouble with a statistics course at a Scottish university, befriends an awkward young man. A Sudanese woman, divorced because she did not want children, plans her wedding to a Scottish man. More of the same, and more of the same again. It got tedious, although the writing was good. That's all I really have to say. On to something better.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was a richly contemplative read, so delicately written like Leila had pondered deeply on these issues and needed to present them with careful precision
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5These stories are about immigrants from Khartoum, Africa to London, England and Aberdeen, Scotland. Being of Scottish descent and having traveled there, I loved the familiarity. I also loved learning about Khartoum and its unique culture and characteristics. It helped me to put myself more in the place of an immigrant and how strange that must be. However, it did not help me understand the plight of refugees who are fleeing for their lives with their families. In all fairness, this book didn't claim that, but I thought maybe a story or two would touch upon these immediate struggles instead of mostly students studying abroad and marrying "foreigners." Also, I didn't quite get Aboulela's fixation with people's eyes, particularly those with poor or damaged eyesight. Maybe it's a metaphor for not being able to see other people clearly? Or maybe not.My favorite was the last story, "Pages of Fruit," in which a writer in real life does not meet the expectations of the image the reader had formed. There were subtle complexities I found appealing. This story, too, is tame, though, compared with the danger refugees are facing today.Read it for a glimpse into these fictional immigrants' lives, but don't expect it to be earth-shattering. The writing is good, but the characters and plots could have easily been set almost anywhere.