this is a novel of transformation.  Najwa lives with her wealthy family in a post part of Khartoum, Sudan.  She longs for everything Western-music, clothes, parties. She shuns the Muslim faith of her country for secularism.  When her world falls apart, she finds hope and help in the local mosque.  A window into both Sudan and ethinically diverse London, this book is about reliion and politics, but most importantly, is is about cange, hope and the healing power of love.

"I am an American now but this wasn't always so." So begins this evocative novel of a young French-American woman, Sagesse LaBasse, and her search to uncover family secrets.  LaBasses struggles to come to terms with the secrets and in the process to determine her own future.  The book takes us from colonial Algeria to France to New England in beautifully written prose.

The author was born in Morocco and has written a beautiful, sensitive novel about the experiences of a range of modern Moroccans.  We meet people illegally crossing the border into Spain- a gentle tour guide, an abused wife, a religious fanatic, a man serching desperately for work.  The novel is about hope. An often dark, but always authentic, look at modern Morocco.

A comprehensive collection of stories that span the length and breadth of the African continent.  Tales from urban centers as well as from battlefronts spark this anthology.  Chinua Achebe from Nigeria, Laila Lalami from Morocco, Nawal El Saadawi from Egypt, and Yvonne Vera from Zimbabwe are but a few of the diverse authors collected here.  Imperative reading for those who want to understand th many people of Africa.

Don't be put off by the length of this book.  With it, Kingsolver moves forward into the realm of Major 20th 21st Century American Writer.  This novel is a moral fable worthy of Conrad (perhaps better in its understanding of Africans). We see what one misguided missionary's zeal meant for the Belgian Congo in 1959-60 and we learn of the errors of American foreign policy.  Best of all we hear all this through the inimitable voices of the missionary's four daughters and his wife.