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River Spirit

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
When Akuany and her brother Bol are orphaned in a village raid in South Sudan, they're taken in by a young merchant Yaseen who promises to care for them, a vow that tethers him to Akuany through their adulthood. As a revolutionary leader rises to power—the self-proclaimed Mahdi, prophesied redeemer of Islam—Sudan begins to slip from the grasp of Ottoman rule, and everyone must choose a side. A scholar of the Qur'an, Yaseen feels beholden to stand against this false Mahdi, even as his choice splinters his family. Meanwhile, Akuany moves through her young adulthood and across the country alone, sold and traded from house to house, with Yaseen as her inconsistent lifeline. Everything each of them is striving for—love, freedom, safety—is all on the line in the fight for Sudan. Through the voices of seven people whose fates grow inextricably linked during the Mahdist War of nineteenth-century Sudan, Leila Aboulela's latest novel illuminates a fraught and bloody reckoning with the history of a people caught in the crosshairs of imperialism. River Spirit is a powerful tale of corruption, coming of age, and unshakeable devotion—to a cause, to one's faith, and to the people who become family.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 2, 2023
      The action-packed latest from Aboulela (Bird Summons) turns on Sudan’s religious civil war in the late 19th century. Akuany is 11 when raiders from the north of Sudan burn her village of Malakal to the ground. During the attack, Akuany and her younger brother, Bol, are kept safe by a merchant named Yaseen and the river, “the spirit of who she was.” Akuany, Bol, and Yaseen then travel north to Al-Ubayyid, where Akuany is sold into slavery and renamed Zamzam, meaning “holy water” in Arabic. On the periphery, a fringe group believes their leader Muhammad Ahmed to be the Mahdi, an Islamic prophet who appears at the end of times to rid the world of evil and injustice. As the Mahdists overtake the country, claiming city after city, Yaseen—now a jurist for an Ottoman chief—must decide whether to falsely claim a zealot as a messiah or to deny him and face certain death, all while trying to figure out how to free Zamzam, whom he’d sworn to protect. Aboulela casts a scrutinous and perceptive eye on the motives of religious leaders and colonial forces, and she layers the narrative with a rich blend of languages and cultures. This brims with drama and nuance.

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  • English

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