Girl
About this book
The final novel by the legendary Irish icon Edna O'Brien, author of
The Country Girls.
'The taboo-breaking, the fabulous prose - there's no one like Edna.'
Anne Enright
'Girl broke me in two: a hard and beautiful miracle.'
Eimear McBride
'An extraordinary act of imagination.'
J.M. Coetzee
'Glittering energy . . . Exemplary.'
Colm Tóibín
I was a girl once, but not any more . . .
A young Nigerian woman, barely more than a girl herself, must learn to survive with a child of her own, in a world which seems entirely consumed by madness. As she navigates a landscape of terrors and trials, ruled by Boko Haram, can she find a place of safety within a society blinkered by mistrust and denial?
'Astonishing.'
New Statesman
'Raw and transfixing.'
Observer
'A masterpiece.'
Irish Independent
'Mesmerising.'
Sunday Times
'Devastating and moving.'
Daily Telegraph
*Winner of the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year 2020; l
onglisted for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction; s
hortlisted for the 2020 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction; s
hortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize 2020*
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Landing Page
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- ‘I was a girl once…’
- ‘It was a big, muddy yard…’
- ‘It was like the corralling of cattle…’
- The woman led me across…’
- ‘And the leaves of the trees are…’
- ‘I was crossing the yard …’
- ‘Buki, short for Bukola…’
- ‘Barbed wire above us…’
- ‘The rain was torrential…’
- ‘The camp was almost deserted…’
- ‘A wife of the emir…’
- ‘The pains started in…’
- ‘A whine, a whistle…’
- ‘After the trudge…’
- ‘Buki and I stood…’
- ‘Butterflies scudding about…’
- ‘The place was deathly silent…’
- ‘The city is teeming with…’
- ‘If you smiled, you would be far prettier…’
- ‘At first sight of each other…’
- ‘It was a feverish day…’
- ‘I think it strange when…’
- ‘My last sight of the…’
- ‘The welcome home party…’
- ‘Uncle and Mama…’
- ‘Mama is pulling me out of bed…’
- ‘First it was her shadow…’
- ‘Mama lay on the bed…’
- ‘The woman came in the dead of night…’
- ‘Mama marched in…’
- ‘There was no track…’
- ‘As the double doors of the convent…’
- ‘There were no gates…’
- ‘Once a month Babby and I…’
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
- Also by the Author
- Copyright
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