Recommendations from our site
“Mohamed really takes advantage of the novel as the vehicle for telling this story. She certainly takes advantage of the use of time, the passage of time. The other books we’ve talked about all handle that quite differently. On the one hand, we get this extremely condensed timeline—the event happens, there’s a trial, there’s an execution, all over a short period—but within that she’s giving us this whole global story that also goes back in time through the character’s earlier life. She gives us the backstory of the victim of the crime as well. So she’s able to use this novel to give what seems like a detective story, on one hand, but then bring into it all of these other kinds of perspectives. And she’s able to mobilise our empathy in a bunch of ways.” Read more...
The Best Fiction of 2021: The Booker Prize Shortlist
Maya Jasanoff, Historian
