Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

I first heard about this book travelling in Uganda where it was recommended to me. It is the story of a woman, Aminatta Forna, who sets out to discover the truth behind her father's execution in Sierra Leone in 1975 for treason. As she traces and lays bare her country's past and the events which led Sierra Leone into civil war, so she gradually discovers that her father's death was nothing less than a judicial murder. Her family's fate and the country's fate are intertwined. And in both case the intervening years have produced only silence. Silence from those responsible for her father's death ( and compellingly she tracks down the survivors one by one). Silence, too, from a generation who were complicit in the death of a nation, who reaped the benefits of a kleptocracy, including the many who cast themselves in the role of 'good men who did nothing'. The same story is played out wherever tyranny has succeeded: from Amin's Uganda to Pinochet's Chile. Every succeeding generation must learn to hold past generations accountable, to ask of each and every one: 'what did you do to prevent this?'. It is the only way to break the cycle. It is an important book for all these reasons and also because it is disturbingly, beautifully, hauntingly written.

This book is fabulous. It is fabulous because it is accurate, interesting, and well-written. I am just a little older than the author and grew-up in Sierra Leone during much of the period described. I recall the Siaka Stevens years as a teen, I vaguely recall the execution of her father. Interestingly, I read another book about the first year that I was there and in that book, there was a reference to that hanging. I am a nonfiction junkie and read mostly books on mathematics--my field, but Aminatta has a keen way of describing Sierra Leone and the interactions of the politics. I read this book very quickly, in a few days during the work week. I have also read her other novel. I must say that this memoir is the best, in my opinion. Compared to the memoir A Long Way Gone about the Sierra Leonian boy soldier, this book by Aminatta is at a much higher level. It holds a longer period of time over which the plot is developed leading up to that war. It is her search to understand and in that respect the reader is searching right along with her. Read it!

I came across the book by accident, while browsing in a bookstore and I was so ashamed at how little I knew about the political history of neighbouring Sierra Leone, having grown up in Nigeria. This book opened a whole new world for me, it is easy to dismiss the events in the country now as one of Africa's woes, but looking at the events which led to the country's downfall from the point of view of someone from my generation, puts it in another perspective. Forna uses prose so richly to describe the events that formed a nation and also her own immediate family. I recommend that anyone who was born into post-colonial Africa read this, especially if you now choose to live outside of the continent, for reasons best known to you. Well done, Aminatta, the spirit of your father lives on in you.

This is one of the best, if not the best book that I have read in my generation. Aminatta's painstakingly traces of forgotten memories, most revealing, bringing to life, a reincarnation of what had passed and what lead to the mayhem, that once an Athens of Africa, our country Sierra Leone, suffered in the hand of wicked nepotistic and corrupt citizens, leaders and Politicians. Every Sierra Leonean should have a copy of this brilliant book and encourage others to read it. She writes in way that I have not experience in a long time, it is one of those books that you cannot just stop reading until you get to the end. I personally recommend this book be part of reading materials prescribes by schools in Sierra Leone. It answers a lot of question, that it is hard for one not to believe its contents. The evil that men do lives after them.
Extraordinarily Brilliant!

Since I learnt of this book from literary reviews I had hastened to find time to zero-in on it. I have not been disappointed. Aminatta writes with such penetrating brilliance that only a born-gifted can produce. The pathos of her father's demise hung heavily on her and with time this must have unleashed a superb creativity embracing analysis and synthesis. She took the lid off the 'golden bowl' of her parents' matrimonial woes, just as she took a swipe at the creoles and mendes for their various shortcomings, leaving the temnes unscathed. Some gross inaccuracies found their way into an otherwise well researched piece, such as there being several hospitals in Freetown at a certain time that catered only to Colonial Masters and their Creole civil servants. Wrong. Hill Station Hospital was for the Colonial Masters. Others contented themselves with Connaught and the Annex, both people from the provinces and Freetown dwellers. She may have been misinformed, probably by a Creole-Phobe.Otherwise her reconteur of the incidents surrounding the 1967 election fiasco,everyday life in Freetown and the Provinces,the time she spent in Britain and Nigeria all adds to slot her into the category of ' an exuberant mind with effusive outpourings', taking into consideration she was only about 6 years old at that time. As a Sierra Leonean who,during his teenage years, traversed the areas described in her book and observed much of the events both from near and afar, I can only say "Well done, Aminatta".I applaud her work, I could not put it down until I reached the end, and I make bold to say this is compulsory reading for any and all with Sierra Leone in mind. Finally,I totally enjoyed her descriptions of things in and around the domestic environ and she won me over with one sentence..."I hated the smell of wet chicken feather and scalded skin ". I hated it too.
Ked E. James, M.D.
Petal,Mississippi,, USA.

From a certain point of view Africa seems like such an enigma - the forgotten continent. Through an amazing memoir--detective story this book brings light and understanding to a so much of what is going on there - as well as being an exceptional read. The story of the author's father (a political dissident) and his fate at the hands of a corrupt regime is meticulously researched and compelling told. No stone is left unturned, no detail ommitted. For all people everywhere it is a fascinating study of corruption and what it does.

For anyone who expects this to be a memoir, it is not. Aminatta Forna tells of her childhood as a daughter of an African father and European mother, growing up in post-colonial Sierra Leone. She also tells of her father's career in politics. A memoir is someone's memory of a certain instance. Usually, they are written as memories of past events years after those events. This cannot be called a memoir because Forna's accounts of her father's life in politics are so detailed that it's obvious she researched his life and conducted interviews.

Furthermore, she tells her story like one of those annoying people who tells a joke by getting half way through the joke and then saying, "Oh wait, I forgot to mention part of the joke." Forna talks about the months of her adulthood, many years after she moved to America, and the struggles she went through to conduct interviews and research her father's life when she goes back to Sierra Leone. Though, she goes back and forth from the age of ten to the age of fifty, losing the cadence of the story like that annoying person who can't tell a joke.

Forna never really let's the reader know how the events of her childhood made her feel. She only tells her readers about the factual events that happened during her childhood. She never lets her readers know what kind of person she is now, and how the events of her childhood caused her to become that type of person. An author should offer their readers more value than they could find perusing Wikipedia, and Forna does not do that.