num_pages: 368
description: Named a Most Anticipated Book by Vogue and VultureAlternately whimsical sweet and dark this astonishing debut novel about a lonely girl waiting for her mother brim[s] with uncompromisingly African magical realism ( The New York Times ).Ayosa is a wandering spiritjoyous exuberant filled to the brim with longing. Her only companions in her grandmothers crumbling house are as lonely as Ayosa the ghostly Fatumas whose eyes are the size of bay windows who teach her to dance and wail at the death news; the Jolly-Annas cruel birds who cover their solitude with spiteful laughter; the milkman who never greets Ayosa and whose milk tastes of mud; and Sindano the kind owner of a caf no one ever visits. Unexpectedly miraculously one day Ayosa finds a friend. Yet she is always fixed on her beautiful mama Nabumbo a mysterious and aloof photographer she comes and goes as she pleases with no apology or warning.Set at the intersection of the spirit world and the human one Things They Lost sets out a rich and magical vision of girlhood as a time of complexity laced with unparalleled creativity and expansion ( Vogue ). Heartbreaking elegant and written in giddily exuberant prose ( Financial Times ) its a story about connection coming-of-age and the dizzying dualities of love at its most intoxicating and all-encompassing.
language: English
title: Things They Lost
publisher: Scribner