The Hundred Wells of Salaga: A Novel

Written by Ayesha Harruna Attah

Narrated by Janina Edwards

Based on true events, a story of courage, forgiveness, love, and freedom in pre-colonial Ghana, told through the eyes of two women born to vastly different fates.

Aminah lives an idyllic life until she is brutally separated from her home and forced on a journey that turns her from a daydreamer into a resilient woman. Wurche, the willful daughter of a chief, is desperate to play an important role in her father's court. These two women's lives converge as infighting among Wurche's people threatens the region, during the height of the slave trade at the end of the nineteenth century.

Through the experiences of Aminah and Wurche, The Hundred Wells of Salaga offers a remarkable view of slavery and how the scramble for Africa affected the lives of everyday people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Apr 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781978649118

Ayesha Harruna Attah

Ayesha Harruna Attah grew up in Accra, Ghana and was educated at Mount Holyoke College, Columbia University, and New York University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Asymptote Magazine, and the 2010 Caine Prize Writers' Anthology. Attah is an Instituto Sacatar Fellow and was awarded the 2016 Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship for nonfiction. She lives in Senegal.

Reviews for The Hundred Wells of Salaga

[carriewuj · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A unique perspective on slavery - from its source in Ghana and the presence of British & German imperialists who support it economically, but also from the local tribes who form alliances and sell out their rivals and enemies. This is all conveyed through the lives of 2 young women: Aminah whose village is raided - she loses her family and becomes a slave - though not sent overseas. Instead she serves a local tribe which features Wurche another young woman, who is the daughter of the tribal king. She longs for power and action in her role, rather than the path of wife that is ordained for her. When she and Aminah meet each has something to learn and gain from the other. Wurche felt a little contrived in her role, but the book broadens history so well, it was worth the read.

[sanddune_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Aminah lives in a small village on the trade route of the caravans from Timbuktu: her life is torn apart when she and her three siblings are captured by slave traders who destroy her village and take her far to the south. Wurche is a princess of the Gonja people, frustrated that as a daughter she is not allowed to play the part in politics that her brothers are encouraged to do. Both come together in this tale of late nineteenth century Ghana where rival factions struggle for the throne of Salaga, against the backdrop of encroachment by the European powers of Britain, France and Germany.I found the background to this story very interesting indeed, based as it is on a real historical period between 1892 and 1897, and focusing on the African perspective rather than that of the European colonisers. Despite the events of the book being very many years after the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, Salaga's slave market is still active, the hundred wells referred to in the title being where the slaves are washed before sale. And the author doesn't shy away from making her characters suitably complicit in its continued operation. Where this novel does fall down however, is in the characterisation, and its ability to generate emotional impact. The different characters come over as oddly flat and too similar, and despite what should be the horror of some of the events depicted, the author doesn't seem to be able to recreate that horror or the emotional response of her characters in her writing.So while I'm glad I read the book, I'm not sure that I'll be searching out anything else by the same author.