Overview

'One of the most moving books of the new year' STYLIST 'Gorgeous and unsettling' NEW YORK TIMES 'Brilliant and devastating...tender and lacerating' PANDORA SYKES 'One of the literary world's most promising new voices' RED I have lived in disaster and disaster has lived in me. Our shared languages are thunder and reverberation. When Nadia Owusu was two years old her mother abandoned her and her baby sister and fled from Tanzania back to the US. When she was thirteen her beloved Ghanaian father died of cancer. She and her sister were left alone, with a stepmother they didn't like, adrift. Nadia Owusu is a woman of many languages, homelands and identities. She grew up in Rome, Dar-es-Salaam, Addis Ababa, Kumasi, Kampala and London. And for every new place there was a new language, a new identity and a new home. At times she has felt stateless, motherless and identity-less. At others, she has had multiple identities at war within her. It's no wonder she started to feel fault lines in her sense of self. It's no wonder that those fault lines eventually ruptured. Aftershocks is the account of how she hauled herself out of the wreckage. It is the intimate story behind the news of immigration and division dominating contemporary politics. Nadia Owusu's astonishingly moving and incredibly timely memoir is a nuanced portrait of globalisation from the inside in a fractured world in crisis.

Full Product Details

Author:   Nadia Owusu
Publisher:   Hodder & Stoughton
Imprint:   Sceptre
Dimensions:   Width: 12.60cm , Height: 2.40cm , Length: 19.60cm
Weight:   0.222kg
ISBN:  

9781529342895

ISBN 10:   1529342899
Pages:   320
Publication Date:   06 January 2022
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

Reviews

Aftershocks is more than just a book - it is delicate, intricate choreography. This memoir is a testimony to how certain books and writers can tell you their story in a way that mirrors your own. Even if the facts of that story are different, the emotion is familiar. Owusu is that writer. She has created a book full of shared emotional memories and I wanted to sit in those memories with her for as long as I could. Nadia Owusu is powerful, beautiful, poetic, and Aftershocks is a testimony to her commitment to constructing towering, lovingly-rendered sentences. Quite simply, Aftershocks is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. -- Bassey Ikpi, <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>I'm Lying but I'm telling the Truth</i> Aftershocks is a triptych feat of style: the lucid language, the masterful handling of time, the brilliance of its seismic theme. It's also an astute exploration of the long legacy of colonialism. Owusu is a product of that political and cultural collision, and one of the great gifts of this compelling memoir is the moving narrative of her reconciling that identity. And if that weren't enough, Aftershocks is an indelible portrait of Owusu's resilience in the face of almost unfathomable familial trauma as well as her immortal love for her father. -- Mitchell S. Jackson, author of <i>Survival Math</i> Nadia Owusu's Aftershocks bleeds honesty. It is a majestically rendered telling of all the history, hurt and love a body can contain. A wonderful work of art made of so many stories and histories it is bursting with both harshness and perseverance. An incredible debut. -- Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of <i>New York Times</i> bestseller <i>Friday Black</i> Nadia Owusu has lived multiple lives. And each has demanded much of her. She has met and surpassed those demands with her memoir, Aftershocks. Owusu is half-Armenian, half-Ghanaian; socially privileged and psychologically wounded. Her task and burden are threefold: to chronicle the historical wounds and legacies of each country; to chart her own descent into grief, mania and madness; to begin the work of emotional reconstruction. She does so with unerring honesty and in prose that is both rigorous and luminous. -- Margo Jefferson, author of <i>Negroland: A Memoir</i> In reading Aftershocks, I went on an incredible (and moving) journey with a young woman whose past and present play out across Africa, Europe and America. I felt acutely Owusu's pain and the joy of her self-discovery through her intense and intimate prose. What a moving and beautifully written personal history, one infused with questions of post-colonial identity and the challenge of modern womanhood. I loved the book. I loved her voice. -- Xiaolu Guo, author of <i>Once Upon a Time in the East</i> and <i>A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers</i> This earth-shattering memoir uses the aftershock - both literal and metaphorical - as a framing device and inspiration. Owusu explores the geopolitical, geological, and psychological traumas that have marked her young life, from moving between countries across Africa and Europe as the daughter of a United Nations employee to her estrangement from her mother and her father's eventual death, as well as living through a civil war in Ethiopia and the 9/11 attacks (to name a few!). * Entertainment Weekly * A white-hot interrogation of the stories we carry in our bodies and the power they have to tear us apart. Owusu illuminates the blood and bones wrought by our borders and teaches us the necessity of owning our narratives when personal and collective histories have been shattered by violence. -- Jessica Andrews, author of <i>Saltwater</i> An engaging and reflective new memoir focused on universal themes of home, abandonment, identity and autonomy. * Ms. Magazine * In a literary landscape rich with diaspora memoirs, Owusu's painful yet radiant story rises to the forefront. The daughter of an Armenian-American mother who abandoned her and a heroic Ghanaian father who died when she was thirteen, Nadia drifted across continents in a trek that she renders here with poetic, indelible prose. * Oprah.com * Engrossing . . . an impressive debut memoir. [Owusu is] a promising writer. * Kirkus * A stunning, visceral book about the ways that our stories-of loss, of love, of borders-leave permanent marks on our bodies and minds. * Booklist * In her enthralling memoir, Whiting Award-winner Owusu (So Devilish a Fire) assesses the impact of key events in her life via the metaphor of earthquakes . . . Readers will be moved by this well-wrought memoir. * Publisher's Weekly * Gripping . . . Tackling themes of belonging, identity, race, notions of home and the ripple effects of trauma . . . Owusu's prose is as poignant as it is emotionally charged . . . Triumphant. * Cosmopolitan * Striking * Vogue US * Extraordinary . . . A writer to watch. -- <i>Bookseller</i>, Editor's Choice The memoir is triumphant: the survivor's account of a thoughtful, passionate young writer grappling with life's demons -- Claire Messud * Harper's Magazine * One of the literary world's most promising new voice . . . An intimate look behind the division of today's world. * Red * A memoir that broods on lost identity and statelessness. * Elle UK *

Extraordinary . . . A writer to watch. -- <i>Bookseller</i>, Editor's Choice Aftershocks is a triptych feat of style: the lucid language, the masterful handling of time, the brilliance of its seismic theme. It's also an astute exploration of the long legacy of colonialism. Owusu is a product of that political and cultural collision, and one of the great gifts of this compelling memoir is the moving narrative of her reconciling that identity. And if that weren't enough, Aftershocks is an indelible portrait of Owusu's resilience in the face of almost unfathomable familial trauma as well as her immortal love for her father. -- Mitchell S. Jackson, author of <i>Survival Math</i> Aftershocks is more than just a book - it is delicate, intricate choreography. This memoir is a testimony to how certain books and writers can tell you their story in a way that mirrors your own. Even if the facts of that story are different, the emotion is familiar. Owusu is that writer. She has created a book full of shared emotional memories and I wanted to sit in those memories with her for as long as I could. Nadia Owusu is powerful, beautiful, poetic, and Aftershocks is a testimony to her commitment to constructing towering, lovingly-rendered sentences. Quite simply, Aftershocks is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. -- Bassey Ikpi, <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>I'm Lying but I'm telling the Truth</i> Nadia Owusu's Aftershocks bleeds honesty. It is a majestically rendered telling of all the history, hurt and love a body can contain. A wonderful work of art made of so many stories and histories it is bursting with both harshness and perseverance. An incredible debut. -- Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of <i>New York Times</i> bestseller <i>Friday Black</i> Nadia Owusu has lived multiple lives. And each has demanded much of her. She has met and surpassed those demands with her memoir, Aftershocks. Owusu is half-Armenian, half-Ghanaian; socially privileged and psychologically wounded. Her task and burden are threefold: to chronicle the historical wounds and legacies of each country; to chart her own descent into grief, mania and madness; to begin the work of emotional reconstruction. She does so with unerring honesty and in prose that is both rigorous and luminous. -- Margo Jefferson, author of <i>Negroland: A Memoir</i> In reading Aftershocks, I went on an incredible (and moving) journey with a young woman whose past and present play out across Africa, Europe and America. I felt acutely Owusu's pain and the joy of her self-discovery through her intense and intimate prose. What a moving and beautifully written personal history, one infused with questions of post-colonial identity and the challenge of modern womanhood. I loved the book. I loved her voice. -- Xiaolu Guo, author of <i>Once Upon a Time in the East</i> and <i>A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers</i> A white-hot interrogation of the stories we carry in our bodies and the power they have to tear us apart. Owusu illuminates the blood and bones wrought by our borders and teaches us the necessity of owning our narratives when personal and collective histories have been shattered by violence. -- Jessica Andrews, author of <i>Saltwater</i> In a literary landscape rich with diaspora memoirs, Owusu's painful yet radiant story rises to the forefront. The daughter of an Armenian-American mother who abandoned her and a heroic Ghanaian father who died when she was thirteen, Nadia drifted across continents in a trek that she renders here with poetic, indelible prose. * Oprah.com * Owusu's personal history intertwines with the political and geographical to create one of the most moving books of the new year. * Stylist * Triumphant: the survivor's account of a thoughtful, passionate young writer grappling with life's demons -- Claire Messud * Harper's Magazine * One of the literary world's most promising new voices . . . An intimate look behind the division of today's world. * Red *

Author Information

Nadia Owusu is a Brooklyn-based writer and urban planner. Her lyric essay chapbook, So Devilish a Fire, was a winner of The Atlas Review chapbook series and was published in 2019. Nadia grew up in Rome, Addis Ababa, Kampala, Dar es Salaam, Kumasi, and London. By day, she is the director of storytelling at Frontline Solutions, a black-owned consulting firm that helps social-change organizations to define goals, execute plans, and evaluate impact. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the New York Times, the Washington Post's The Lily, Orion, the Literary Review, the Paris Review Daily, Catapult, Bon Appetit, and others. She is a graduate of Pace University (BA), Hunter College (MS), and the Mountainview MFA program where she now teaches and where she won the Robert J. Begeibing Prize for exceptional work.

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