Literary Fiction — The Book Roads

The Memory of Love

Aminatta Forna

In post-civil-war Freetown, Sierra Leone, three men struggle to come to terms with the past and the emotional scars left by decades of political violence. Adrian Lockheart, a British psychologist, arrives in the country hoping to escape his own troubled life. At the hospital where he works, he meets Kai Mansaray, a gifted young surgeon haunted by the horrors he witnessed during the civil war, and Elias Cole, an elderly former university professor whose failing health has brought him face to face with memories he has spent decades trying to suppress. As Adrian listens to Elias recount his youth in the late 1960s, a story of obsessive love, jealousy, and betrayal gradually emerges. His memories reveal how personal choices became entangled with political repression and the fate of an entire nation. Meanwhile, Kai struggles to reconcile his professional dedication with the psychological wounds that threaten to overwhelm him. Moving between different generations and periods of Sierra Leonean history, The Memory of Love explores the relationship between private suffering and collective trauma. It is a moving examination of love, guilt, memory, and the long shadow that war casts over those who survive it.

Sierra Leone 2010