As Ethiopian refugees gradually begin to fill the flats of the housing estate where she lives, she begins to share her longing for a home in that distant land and her heartbreaking search for her missing lover, Aziz. In the racially charged world of Thatcher's London, Lilly, a young, white, Muslim nurse, struggles in a state of invisible exile. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title.įrom award-winning and bestselling author Camilla Gibb comes a richly imagined narrative of one woman's search for love and belonging cast against a nuanced portrait of political upheaval. Camilla Gibb has pulled off an astounding feat with this stunning novel never has the distinct and troubled history of this corner of Ethiopia been told with such humanity, warmth, clarity, and grace. Lilly's story is laced with longing and regret, but above all hope-hope that time and love can heal the rifts of her turbulent past. Gibb richly evokes the stinging disconnect between Lilly's past life and her present life, between her attempts to start anew and her inability to let go of the past.

Gibb's haunting narrative takes us seamlessly on a journey between these two distinct worlds: the ancient walled city of Harar and the racially charged atmosphere of 1980s London. Despite her British roots, Lilly discovers she is as much an outsider in London as a Muslim as she was in Harar as a white foreigner. But the two are wrenched apart when Lilly is again forced to flee, for her safety and his, this time to London. She eventually builds a life for herself teaching children the Qur'an, and she finds herself falling in love with an idealistic young doctor. In Harar, even her very traditional Muslim head scarves cannot hide her white skin in her new and strange surroundings the word 'farenji'-foreigner-is hissed at her everywhere she turns. Years later, her journey from Morocco to Harar, Ethiopia, is half pilgrimage, half flight.

Lilly fills that haunted hollow in her life with intense study and memorization of the Qur'an under the patient care of the Sufi saint's disciple she was entrusted to. Three weeks later, she learns they've been murdered. When Lilly is eight years old, her pot-smoking hippie British parents leave her at a Sufi shrine in Morocco and inform her they will be back to collect her in three days.

An evocative and richly imagined story of a British Muslim woman's search for love and belonging in two very different worlds.

Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb