Elsewhere, Home

By Leila Aboulela

Intimate stories of longing and exile by one of our finest contemporary writers.

A lonely housewife fascinated with a famous writer learns to find her own voice in Abu Dhabi; a bus route passing the Christmas lights along Oxford Street is a stark reminder for a female passenger of her brother’s tragic death on the eve of his wedding; and a Scottish man working in a kebab shop and his girlfriend try desperately to reconcile Islam’s place in their fragile relationship.

From the heat of Khartoum at the height of summer to the wintery streets of London, from the concrete high rises in the Gulf to the blustery coast in Aberdeen, this elegant and moving collection vividly evokes the overlapping worlds of Africa, Britain and the Middle East. Beautifully observed and written with empathy, Leila Aboulela’s stories deftly capture the search for home in our fast-changing world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Telegram Books
• Release date: Jul 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781846592126

Leila Aboulela

Leila Aboulela was born in Cairo, grew up in Khartoum and moved to Aberdeen in her mid-twenties. She is the author of five novels, Bird Summons, The Translator, a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year, The Kindness of Enemies, Minaret and Lyrics Alley, Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. She was the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, and her short story collection, Elsewhere, Home, won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages and she was longlisted three times for the Orange Prize for Fiction (now the Women’s Prize). Her plays The Insider, The Mystic Life and others were broadcast on BBC Radio, and her fiction included in publications such as Freeman’s, Granta and Harper’s Magazine.

Reviews for Elsewhere, Home

[cariola_6 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While I've enjoyed earlier books by this author, I've never been blown away by them, and that pattern continues with her latest release. It's a collection of short stories, most of them set in either Scotland or the Sudan, and most of them focusing on Scottish and Sudanese couples. A young man flies to the Sudan to meet his fiancé's family. An engaged young woman, having trouble with a statistics course at a Scottish university, befriends an awkward young man. A Sudanese woman, divorced because she did not want children, plans her wedding to a Scottish man. More of the same, and more of the same again. It got tedious, although the writing was good. That's all I really have to say. On to something better.

[donnamariemerritt · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

These stories are about immigrants from Khartoum, Africa to London, England and Aberdeen, Scotland. Being of Scottish descent and having traveled there, I loved the familiarity. I also loved learning about Khartoum and its unique culture and characteristics. It helped me to put myself more in the place of an immigrant and how strange that must be. However, it did not help me understand the plight of refugees who are fleeing for their lives with their families. In all fairness, this book didn't claim that, but I thought maybe a story or two would touch upon these immediate struggles instead of mostly students studying abroad and marrying "foreigners." Also, I didn't quite get Aboulela's fixation with people's eyes, particularly those with poor or damaged eyesight. Maybe it's a metaphor for not being able to see other people clearly? Or maybe not.My favorite was the last story, "Pages of Fruit," in which a writer in real life does not meet the expectations of the image the reader had formed. There were subtle complexities I found appealing. This story, too, is tame, though, compared with the danger refugees are facing today.Read it for a glimpse into these fictional immigrants' lives, but don't expect it to be earth-shattering. The writing is good, but the characters and plots could have easily been set almost anywhere.