The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest [Paperback]

Aminatta Forna (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 18, 2003

As a child Aminatta Forna witnessed the upheavals of postcolonial Africa, danger, flight, the bitterness of exile in Britain, and the terrible consequences of her dissident father's stand against tyranny. Mohamed Forna was a man of unimpeachable integrity and enchanting charisma. As Sierra Leone faced its future as a fledgling democracy, he was a new star in the political firmament, a man who had been one of the first black students to come to Britain after the war. He stole the heart of Aminatta's mother and returned with her to Sierra Leone. But as Aminatta Forna shows with compelling clarity, the old Africa was torn apart by new ways of Western parliamentary democracy, which gave birth only to dictatorships and corruption of hitherto undreamed-of magnitude. It was not long before Mohamed languished in jail as a prisoner of conscience, and worse was to follow. Aminatta's search for the truth that shaped both her childhood and the nation's destiny began among the country's elite and took her into the heart of rebel territory. The Devil that Danced on the Water is a book of pain and anger and sorrow, written with tremendous dignity and beautiful precision.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Forna saw her father for the last time on July 30, 1974; she was 10 years old. In this harrowing memoir-cum-detective story, journalist Forna searches for the truth about her father's execution in Sierra Leone after his treason conviction for allegedly attempting a coup upon the government in which he had once been a cabinet minister. Mohamed Forna, a British-educated doctor and activist in what was, in the 1960s, a fledgling democracy extricating itself from British colonialist rule, resigned from what had become a dictatorship rife with corruption and chaos. The consequences of that resignation culminated in eight executions and precipitated the descent into anarchy of Africa's poorest nation. Forna writes with a compelling mix of distance and anguish, intent on explaining her father's death and reclaiming his memory. Lush descriptions of her idyllic childhood provide eerie counterpoint to chilling depictions of the hell Sierra Leone had become upon her return in recent years, a place where bands of child warriors, hacking off limbs as both punishment and warning, have created a mutilated populace. The poverty her father tried to fight remains the only constant in the war-torn land. A harsh critic of her father's executioners, Forna nevertheless equivocates on the dictatorships that have wreaked havoc throughout Africa, querying her own identity as a diaspora mixed-race Afro-European. Reminiscent of Isabelle Allende's House of the Spirits, Forna's work is a powerfully and elegantly written mix of complex history, riveting memoir and damning expos‚
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Forna's father, Mohamed, was a leading politician in newly liberated Sierra Leone but landed in jail as a prisoner of conscience when democracy turned to dictatorship.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (December 18, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802140483
• ISBN-13: 978-0802140487
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #677,279 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #31 in Books > History > Africa > Sierra Leone

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gripping introduction to Sierra Leones convoluted politics, October 21, 2003

By 

artemis "artemis" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest (Hardcover)

As a gripping introduction to Sierra Leone's convoluted post-Independence politics, this book is unmatched.

Through the story of her own life, as the daughter of an influential and key political figure in newly independent Sierra Leone, we are led through the details of how Sierra Leone made its gradual descent from one of the most promising countries in West Africa, the place that used to be called "the Athens of Africa", to what is today considered euphemistically a "collapsed state". While one has heard of Foday Sankoh and the RUF, and one has an idea that diamonds are involved, Aminatta Forna takes us back to the very beginning of the process of decay. From the imprisonment of the victors in the 1967 elections, to the eventual rise to power of the rightful victor of that election, Siaka Stephens, and his consolidation of Sierra Leone into a one-party state completely under his own control.

The book is divided into two parts. In part one, we read about Aminatta's first ten years, as she moved between Scotland, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, according to the political situation in Sierra Leone, and the state of her parents' marriage. Consumed by politics, and not fully accepted by Forna's very traditional Sierra Leonean family, Mohamed Forna and his Scottish wife Maureen quickly grew apart. By the time Aminatta was eight, she had lived in six different homes, in three different countries. Part one ends when Mohamed Forna is taken away by state security, imprisoned, and his children never see him again.

Part two begins some 25 years later, in the year 2000, when Aminatta has started to research the death of her father. As a child she was told he died of stomach ulcers, which she always knew was not the truth. She returns from England to war-torn Sierra Leone where she seeks out everyone involved in her father's arrest, trial, and execution. She interviews scores of people, reads the complete trial transcript, and uses her own memories of the day he was taken away to try to piece together what really happened. What she finds is a blatant perversion of justice. Bribed and tortured witnesses, manufactured evidence, a jury of government stooges, and a judge obviously in the pockets of the state, together find her father guilty of treason and condemn him to death.

The narrator, Aminatta Forna herself, who writes in the first person, is not completely trustworthy, however. Particularly in the beginning of the book, she makes so many polemical statements about the nature of states' corruption, in the midst of which she states as fact a contested interpretation of history-who really killed Patrice Lumumba-that one is thenceforth wary of her claims.

Coming to the book with very little knowledge of Sierra Leonean history, and again recognizing her bias towards her father's goodness, his achievements, after a while, become somewhat incredulous. We are repeatedly told how brilliant Mohamed Forna was. At medical school in Scotland he was top of his class. The clinic he opened in a rural Sierra Leonean town was the model of Sierra Leonean healthcare. He won his parliamentary seat by the largest margin ever, he had the most support of all the politicians, as finance minister his budget was the most sensible that Sierra Leone had ever seen, and Sierra Leone enjoyed a fiscal surplus for the first time while he was minister. Sometimes it seems a bit too good to be true. Then she lets us know that he does have a weakness. Mohamed Forna's only shortcoming, according to his daughter's account, was with women. He carried on an extra-marital affair openly in front of his children, as he betrayed their stepmother who had spent the previous four years of her own life looking after his own children in England, while he was in prison. Yet the incidental treatment that Aminatta Forna gives this aspect of her father's life leaves the reader not fully understanding why Forna has included this in her account, as she does not use it to help us to understand her father and his choices.

However, I must confess that I couldn't put the book down once I had started reading it. Even amongst my quibbles about style and some of the content, I was compelled to keep turning the pages until I had finished, in a virtual non-stop two day reading marathon. Indeed these drawbacks that I cite, by the end of the book, are either forgotten or forgiven, as the account is so detailed and well researched, and too, moving.

The point is that once democracy, and democratic institutions and processes get corrupted, it tends to be a slippery slope, with a very unpleasant end, that exacts its tolls not only on countries, but on the lives and relationships of individuals. Aminatta Forna's book is a pithy and personal account of exactly how this happens.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Compelling, but...., October 14, 2004

By 

Elaine Thompson (Trinidad, West Indies) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest (Hardcover)

It is a difficult topic to write about, that relationship between father and daughter. In this case, the narrative is compelling and intensely personal, so much so that it is difficult to get a sense of who Mohammed Forna actually was. Sierra Leone, contrary to its image in the media, was a complex society, and the whole relationship of the Creoles and the 'upline' people is at the very centre of the post colonial struggle. Ms. Forna treats very very lightly with that.

On the whole, even though she documents her hurts and slights growing up as a child of colour in the United Kingdom, for me, a child of Ghana and to a lesser extent, Sierra Leone in the same time frame as Ms. Forna, there is a sense that she had little or no idea of what was going on, apart from the hero worship of her father, which is , of course , understandable.

Through her prose, though, I am able to relive those times in Sierra Leone - who can forget Mile 91, Kissy Road, Connaught Hospital, Lumley Beach! The diamond smuggling which is at the very heart of the tragedy. It is easy to forget that no one in Sierra Leone, especially not the rural poor, is capable of making a bullet, let alone a gun. So who profits? And for what? That is at the very centre of the tragedy. The Tiny Rolands, with their footprints all over Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Botswana - they are the ones who do.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully & movingly written blend of memoir. journalism, history, August 14, 2005

By 

Crescent Dragonwagon (35 isolated acres in the Green Mountains of Vermont; formerly, for 33 years, the Arkansas Ozarks) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest (Hardcover)

Finding/discovering a vanished father. Untangling a terrible and terrifying, deeply saddening history of a place, personal and poltical, on which colonialism, broken promises, fear, racism, and inter-tribal rivalries and conflicts have all trod. What happens when ideals, hope, and education run up against such a history. The close-up, precise remains of a child's memory, feelings, and confusions overlaid with an adult daughter's detailed investigative and journalistic skills. All of these are part of this compulsively readable book, which tells the story of a family, a country (Sierra Leone), and a world torn apart and painstakingly, to whatever extent possible, reconstructed --- at least in the author's own hard-won understanding. I am a white American who happened on this book by accident. I love and respect memoirs where the author is transparent of heart and mind, especially in the context of a larger societal, political, or situational challenge. This book met these criteria with stunning precision. I could not put Aminatta Forna's courageous book down, and have been recommending it to everyone I know.