Name: Girl
ISBN: 9780571341191

Edna O'Brien

Longlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction A Times, Evening Standard and Financial Times Book of the Year I was a girl once, but not any more . . . A young woman, barely more than a girl herself, must learn to survive with a child of her own, in a world which seems entirely consumed by madness. As she navigates a landscape of terrors and trials, can she find a place of safety within a society blinkered by mistrust and denial? 'Astonishing.' New Statesman 'Raw and transfixing.' Observer 'Miraculous . . . Extraordinary.' Mail on Sunday 'A masterpiece.' Irish Independent 'Mesmerising.' Sunday Times 'Devastating and moving.' Daily Telegraph By the author of The Country Girls (dramatised on BBC Radio 4 in August 2019).

Girl

The Sunday Times bestseller: Girl is the new novel by the legendary Edna O'Brien, author of The Country Girls (dramatised on BBC Radio 4 in August 2019). Captured, abducted and married into Boko Haram, the narrator of this story witnesses and suffers the horrors of a community of men governed by a brutal code of violence. Barely more than a girl herself, she must soon learn how to survive as a woman with a child of her own. Just as the world around her seems entirely consumed by madness, bound for hell, she is offered an escape of sorts - but only into another landscape of trials and terrors amidst the unforgiving wilds of northeastern Nigeria, through the forest and beyond; a place where her traumas are met with the blinkered judgement of a society in denial. How do we love in a world that has lost its moorings? How can we comprehend the barbarism of our enemies, and learn forgiveness for atrocities committed in the name of ideology? Edna O'Brien's new novel pierces to the heart of these questions: and the result is her masterpiece.

Emma

Girl, Edna O’Brien’s hotly anticipated new novel, envisages the lives of the Boko Haram girls in a masterpiece of violence and tenderness. I was a girl once, but not anymore. So begins Girl, Edna O’Brien’s harrowing portrayal of the young women abducted by Boko Haram. Set in the deep countryside of northeast Nigeria, this is a brutal story of incarceration, horror, and hunger; a hair-raising escape into the manifold terrors of the forest; and a descent into the labyrinthine bureaucracy and hostility awaiting a victim who returns home with a child blighted by enemy blood. From one of the century's greatest living authors, Girl is an unforgettable story of one victim’s astonishing survival, and her unflinching faith in the redemption of the human heart.

Girl

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