Sofia Samatar

This is the sort of book that sits with you and forgets to leave, and at some point you turn around from whatever you're doing and realize you're still thinking about it.

It's a ruminative story, with a slowly building story. Big stuff happens, but it unspools rather than explodes, and the protagonist, Jevick, doesn't carry the day and save the kingdom: he is a heartbeat in a grander political and religious conflict. I'd say A Stranger in Olondria is demonstrative of the ongoing erosion between the barriers of genre (which I'm defining right now by pulp conventions, rapid plot, etc) and literary (which I'm defining as prose- and character-motivated) work. The heart of the story is the main character's personal transformation.

Also, there are ghosts and lyric poetry. Unlike the poetry in nearly any other novel I've read, it's beautiful and moves the story.
… (més)

Part travelogue, part history of a colony of Russian Mennonites who settled in what in now Uzbekistan in the 1880s, part personal meditation, The White Mosque is an engrossing read. The author Sofia Samatar is of mixed heritage—her father was a Somali Muslim, her mother a white American of Swiss-German heritage—and she uses that as a lens through which to explore issues of identity and belonging. Samatar's prose is vivid, though perhaps at times a little too consciously so; equally, the digressive quality of her writing sometimes helps to reinforce her overall thematic points and sometimes seems to stray too far afield. Overall, though, I found this fascinating and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in memoirs which explore such themes.… (més)