Tinged with melancholy, this story follows a middle-aged, mixed race woman as she tries to connect with her black heritage in the wake of her white mother's death. There are big themes at work in this book - identity, family, connection - and Anna's journey is incredibly broad in scope - from suburban London to a fictionalised west African dictatorship - but it's always profoundly human.
Segu was not yet in sight. We still flew over the forest. It was a green that perhaps only a painter could capture, with undertones of gold and orange. Patches of red earth appeared, holes in a thick beard. Then the first houses, shacks with rust roofs, straggling on the edge of the forest like crumbs. Dirt roads cut through the landscape like veins. The green receded, torn up by human hands.
