Ghost Session by Abbas

NGN38,760

*About author, Ghost season*

Abbas was born in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital. In 1989, after a military Islamist coup, her father – a university professor who had signed a statement against the regime — was detained for a year as a political prisoner. Once freed, he lost his job and university housing so the family moved to America in 1990 when Abbas was eight. Her mother worked for the United Nations and they ended up in New York.

Abbas went on to earn a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Harvard and an MFA in creative writing at Hunter College, but before that, she returned to Sudan and worked for an NGO involved in a literacy program for internally displaced women. She spent some of her time in a border town that inspired Saraaya.

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*Ghost season*

A mysterious burnt corpse appears one morning in Saraaya, a remote border town between northern and southern Sudan. For five strangers on an NGO compound, the discovery foreshadows trouble to come. South Sudanese translator William connects the corpse to the sudden disappearance of cook Layla, a northern nomad with whom he’s fallen in love.

Meanwhile, Sudanese American filmmaker Dena struggles to connect to her unfamiliar homeland, and white midwestern aid worker Alex finds his plans thwarted by a changing climate and looming civil war. Dancing between the adults is Mustafa, a clever, endearing twelve-year-old, whose schemes to rise out of poverty set off cataclysmic events on the compound.

Amid the paradoxes of identity, art, humanitarian aid, and a territory riven by conflict, William, Layla, Dena, Alex, and Mustafa must forge bonds stronger than blood or identity. Weaving a sweeping history of the breakup of Sudan into the lives of these captivating characters, Fatin Abbas explores the porous and perilous nature of borders―whether they be national, ethnic, or religious―and the profound consequences for those who cross them. Ghost Season is a gripping, vivid debut that announces Abbas as a powerful new voice in fiction.

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