British Author Challenge October 2022: Aminatta Forna & Lawrence Durrell

Aminatta Forna was born in Scotland in 1964, the daughter of a Sierra Leonean father and Scottish mother. The family moved to Sierra Leone when she was six months old. Her father was imprisoned in 1970 and hanged on charges of treason in 1975; Forna's first book, The Devil That Danced on the Water, was born of her investigation into her father's death.

Forna studied law at University College London and worked for the BBC in both radio and television. She has been nominated for a number of literary awards, and has won both the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize.

Works
The Memory of Love
The Hired Man
Ancestor Stones
Happiness
The Devil That Danced On the Water: A Daughter's Memoir
Mother of All Myths
The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion
The Angel of Mexico City

Lawrence Durrell was born in India in 1912. He published his first book in 1935; the same year he moved with his mother and siblings to Corfu, a story which will be familiar to those who read his brother Gerald's book, My Family and Other Animals.

Durrell worked for the British Foreign Service and continued to write, eventually becoming a bestselling author and winning several literary prizes. He died in 1990.

Selected works
Alexandria Quartet
The Avignon Quintet
Antrobus series
The Revolt of Aphrodite series
Blue Thirst: Tales of Life Abroad
The Black Book
White Eagles Over Serbia
The Dark Labyrinth

>2 amanda4242: I read all four books of the Alexandria Quartet earlier this year. A great series, though Mountolive was my favorite of the set.

>3 ocgreg34: The Alexandria Quartet has been on my tbr list for a long time and I hope to get to at least the first book in October.

>3 ocgreg34: >4 amanda4242: I'm planning to read the first book in the Alexandria Quartet, too. Also Happiness by Aminatta Forna. I've already read Ancestor Stones and The Memory of Love and I really liked both of those books.

>5 cbl_tn: I will join you, Carrie, with Happiness.

I am a little spoilt for choice when it comes to Larry Durrell as I have 9 books of his on the shelves. I will definitely get to at least one of them.

>6 PaulCranswick: For the Alexandria Quartet, I recommend reading them in order: Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and finally Clea. They do follow each other in time, and the later books refer back to sections of the preceding ones.

Happiness is my choice. Hope it delivers on its title!

The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion by Aminatta Forna

I was very pleasantly surprised by this essay collection, which uses her peripatetic life as inspiration to explore a multitude of topics. Forna does tend to wander in her writing, but it's more like a conversational drift than she's losing the point.

I didn't care for the one novel of hers I've read, but I'm definitely interested in reading more non-fiction from Forna.

Stiff Upper Lip and Sauve Qui Peut by Lawrence Durrell

Two collections of humorous tales from life in the diplomatic corps. Nothing deep, but they'd be amusing to read while waiting for appointments.

I am reading Happiness and it is a very interesting and different writing experience.

>10 Kristelh: That's the one with the fox researcher, right? One of the essays in The Window Seat discusses foxes and other animals in urban environments.

>11 amanda4242:, Amanda, it is. I am intrigued with this fox researcher and the descriptions of the foxes is almost mystical. I am especially interested because I have had a young coyote that has hung around my place this summer. He could be called urban cause he doesn’t seem very afraid to be seen by me.

>12 Kristelh: We have a lot of coyotes around here and I've never found them to be particularly shy creatures.

The November thread is up!

https://www.librarything.com/topic/345472

Happiness offered a fine human plot coupled with gruesome animal cruelty.

>13 amanda4242:, I have a lot of coyotes too but I never see them in the daylight, sitting in my yard, eating my wild cherries and apples and just lying in the sun. The coyote pack was howling last night. They make a racket but it never goes on long and I know they are running through my wind rows. I’ve seen them on a game camera.

>16 Kristelh: I see them running through the fields in the late afternoon sometimes; my very large dog keeps them away from the house.