Description
In a small town on the bank of the river, 16 year-old Asha is struggling to find a meaningful role for herself. She has already survived a traumatic childhood and her education has been brought to a halt by an abusive stepfather. But now her life is thrown into fresh turmoil by a series of unforeseen events and she moves to the capital to continue her education. There she discovers love but also becomes aware of a dark secret in her family’s past that she begins to unpick with devastating consequences.
This tale of love and grief observed through the eyes of a young woman on the verge of emancipation is set in a young African country riven by ethnic and religious tensions. The novel explores issues of identity, faith and justice, and the impact of rapid change on an emerging nation torn between its Arab-Muslim heritage and distinct African character.
Praise and Reviews
"This first novel of Sudanese-born Bristol
resident Isam Babiker is a dark vision of one girl’s attempts to bloom in the
scorching heat of political upheaval, tradition, fate and a torturous family
history.
Despite the pervasive divisions in the society
it creates, The Baobab’s Covenant With Rain has at its heart the bonds between people. Babiker’s novel harrowingly
examines the difficulties of trying to maintain the bonds that we choose over
those institutionalised ones that we try to reject." – Rachel Stenner, researcher at Bristol University