Sweetness in the Belly - Hardcover

Gibb, Camilla

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0434014532 ISBN 13: 9780434014538

Publisher: Penguin Press, 2006

Synopsis

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

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. Three weeks later, she learns they've been murdered. 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. Years later, her journey from Morocco to Harar, Ethiopia, is half pilgrimage, half flight. 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. She eventually builds a life for herself teaching children the Qur'an, and she finds herself falling in love with an idealistic young doctor. But the two are wrenched apart when Lilly is again forced to flee, for her safety and his, this time to 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.

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. 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. 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. 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.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

From 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.
In the racially charged world of Thatcher's London, Lilly, a young, white, Muslim nurse, struggles in a state of invisible exile. 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.
Gibb takes us on a journey back to Haile Selassie's Ethiopia, and tells the remarkable story of Lilly's discovery of an unexpected place for herself within the walls of the ancient city of Harar, a revered centre of Islam, unique in its language, customs and beliefs. As her roots in the place deepen so too does her clandestine relationship with the young Dr. Aziz. But Ethiopia is veering toward revolution, and hope for a future with Aziz is dramatically threatened when the country is thrown into political turmoil.
A psychologically complex and utterly convincing story, alive with political insight and sensuous detail, Sweetness in the Belly is a mesmerizing work from one of Canada's most distinctive and exciting voices.

"From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Camilla Gibb was born in London, England, and grew up in Toronto. She has a Ph.D. in social anthropology from Oxford University for which she conducted fieldwork in Ethiopia. Her two previous novels, Mouthing the Words, winner of the City of Toronto Book Award in 2000, and The Petty Details of So-and-So's Life, have been published in eighteen countries and translated into fourteen languages, receiving rave reviews all around the world. She is one of twenty-one writers on the Orange Futures List--a list of young writers to watch, compiled by the jury of the prestigious Orange Prize. Camilla lives in Toronto, where she serves as vice president of PEN Canada and is currently writerin-residence at the University of Toronto.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0434014532
• ISBN 13: 9780434014538
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1