DAUGHTER OF HERE + Novel + LINDA LEITH PUBLISHING + 220pages + $21.95 + ISBN : 9781773900681
Translated by Katia Grubisic
Daughter of Here is an experiment in memory, desire, and time. As she sifts through her international whirlwind romance with Célestin, her larger-than-life love for her daughter Mo, and her own childhood behind the Iron Curtain, Dolores’s narrative shifts from Williamsburg, to Tokyo, to Bucharest before and after the fall, and to Cairo at the first spark of the Arab Spring.
Filmic and thought-provoking, this novel straddles the political and the personal with ease and eloquence.
When I was a child, I met a Sudanese man. He had come to Bucharest to study medicine. According to family lore, he wanted to marry me and take me away to Khartoum. I was ready. I already had a white dress.
I wonder if that Sudanese man is still alive, if he went home after finishing medical school in Bucharest. Subconsciously, I’m still the bride of Khartoum. Maybe that’s why I would have wanted things with Célestin to start there. What remains of that wish is a photograph, a postcard. In my head, that’s where we met.