The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest

This is an intimate and moving portrait of a family combined with an account of the events which swept through Africa in the post-independence period. As the child of a Sierra Leonian medical student and a white, working class woman in 1960s Aberdeen, Aminatta Forna saw bricks thrown through the windows of the family home and her mother spat on in the street and disowned by her own father. On moving to Sierra Leone, where her parents set up a clinic, she enjoyed an idyllic childhood playing among the mango trees. But her father's increasing involvement in politics became too much of a strain for her mother, who fled back to England. Aminatta's father married a Sierra Leonian and became Deputy Prime Minister and the family enjoyed the life of the elite.