Tentative by Anna Leader

a nutshell: set in Paris but sprawling across Central Europe, this teen fiction (written by a Luxembourger teenager) follows a young girl whose heart is pulled in different directions

a line: “Or did you develop a tolerance for sadness, like a drug, and need larger and larger doses to produce the same effect?”

an image: there were many reminders of my adolescence in this novel, with some poignant chapters in which the main character immersed herself in books (& berries) to escape teen turmoil

a thought: it was so refreshing to read a book with a happy ending – I hadn’t realised how much I needed to dip into this unrefined yet enjoyable book

a fact: aged 16 when she wrote this, Leader is the youngest author I’ve read so far for this project – this is her first (semi-autobiographical) novel

want to read Tentative? visit here

Zlata’s Diary by Zlata Filipovic (tr. Christina Pribichevich-Zoric)

photo of Zlata holding her diary as book cover, wooden desk behind

a nutshell: with diary entries from Sept 1991 to Dec 1993, this is a young girl’s deeply moving, courageous & intelligent account of what it was like to have been flung into a fight for survival under the Bosnian War as it engulfed Sarajevo

a line: “They’re drawing maps, colouring with their crayons, but I think they’re crossing out human beings, childhood and everything that’s nice and normal.”

an image: as she has grown out of her clothes, Zlata has to borrow some from the wardrobe of a friend who has fled Sarajevo; she describes standing in the girl’s empty space, surrounded by broken windows & dust, saying the room is sad and so is she

a thought: the child’s simple observations hold more clearsightedness & compassion than the ‘grown-ups’ pulling the strings of politics – she comments that among friends and family there’ve always been Serbs, Croats & Muslims, questioning why politics has meddled to create separations

a fact: Zlata’s diary has now been translated into 36 languages; at one point she writes that some people compare her with Anne Frank, which frightens her as she doesn’t want to suffer the same fate – and, thankfully, Zlata does not

want to read Zlata’s Diary? visit here

Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga (tr. Melanie Mauthner)

a nutshell: set in 1970s Rwanda, an elite Catholic boarding school for girls becomes a microcosm for racial tensions

a line: “‘As far as I’m concerned, she’s neither Hutu nor Tutsi, she’s my mother.’ ‘Maybe one day, there’ll be a Rwanda with neither Hutu nor Tutsi.'”

an image: having just learned the fate of her Tutsi friend, a schoolgirl silently struggles to hold back tears and blot out the horrific images assailing her

a thought: despite its eventual tilt into brutality, overall this novel did not feel like a difficult read – incredibly well written & paced, it easily carried me away into the world of the lycée

a fact: by the time of the 1994 genocide, Mukasonga had settled in France after fleeing to Burundi – she later learned that 27 of her family members had been massacred

bonus fact: a film based on the book is being released soon

want to read Our Lady of the Nile? visit here

No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference by Greta Thunberg

a nutshell: a terrifyingly necessary call to action, this collection of speeches by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg (b.2003) – who sparked a global movement via school strikes – should be compulsory reading worldwide, esp. for politicians & businesses

a line: “We children are doing this to wake the adults up. We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start acting as you would in a crisis. We children are doing this because we want our hopes and dreams back.”

an image: Greta repeatedly calls for world leaders to act as if our house is on fire, that is, to respond with the level of panic that this global emergency demands and to drop the business-as-usual complacency

a thought: condemning the UK’s ongoing support for new exploitation of fossil fuels (the shale-gas fracking industry, the expansion of the North Sea oil & gas fields, the expansion of airports, the planning permission for a new coal mine), Greta predicts that this recklessness will be recalled as one of humankind’s greatest failures

a fact: scientists unanimously tell us we have just 11 years before setting off an irreversible chain reaction, way beyond human control, that will probably be the end of our civilisation as we know it – how can we not act on that knowledge?

want to read No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference? visit here

Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga

a nutshell: Tambu, a young girl in a deprived Shona village, cautiously recounts her years of struggle against sexism & racism in the hope of gaining an education and opening up opportunities for her family within a society that presumes her failure

a line: “You have to keep moving … Getting involved in this and that, finding out one thing and another. Moving, all the time. Otherwise you get trapped” (– advice to Tambu from her semi-westernised cousin, Nyasha)

an image: it’s hard to watch as Tambu’s painstaking efforts to grow maize and earn her primary school fees are thwarted by sabotage & scorn – her brother’s active hostility to the prospect of her schooling is one of many reasons behind Tambu’s frank opening statement that she was “not sorry” at his death; we learn that he constantly gloried in the exclusion & oppression she had faced as a girl since birth

a thought: memory is an ongoing source of anxiety to Tambu, particularly around identity; her observations on how (i) her brother’s British missionary education erased his self-recognition and generated a warped sense of superiority (ii) her cousin’s English upbringing tore at her roots and left her deeply unsettled

a fact: the title is from an intro to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, a 1961 text on the trauma of colonisation, which contains the line: “The condition of native is a nervous condition”; Dangarembga does not shy away from exposing the insidious influence of British colonialism, which lurks behind scenes of subservience, conservatism, misogyny, linguistic alienation, trauma, hypocrisy, injustice… (the ramifications are endless)

want to read Nervous Conditions? visit here

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

a nutshell: 15yo Kambili lets us peek into her household, where the deep-rooted reign of her tyrant father – a fanatical Catholic – is starting to show signs of decay

a line: “Perhaps we will talk more with time, or perhaps we never will be able to say it all, to clothe things in words, things that have long been naked”

an image: Kambili’s father’s renouncement of his own father (Papa-Nnukwu) since the old man holds onto ancestors’ faith means Kambili & her brother are permitted just one very fleeting, futile meeting annually with their poverty-stricken grandfather, which makes for a moving scene in his ramshackle yard

a thought: for me the novel flagged up how a sense of fear and worship meshes in such an inextricable way – both within a family unit and within the religious sphere

a fact: Chimamanda grew up in Nsukka as the fifth of six children in an Igbo family whose ancestral village was Aba – these towns are at the centre of her debut

want to read Purple Hibiscus? visit here

Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy (tr. Tim Parks)

a nutshell: on the outside, a girl recalls her orderly upbringing at a Swiss boarding school; on the inside, she reveals herself shrieking with frustrated, distracted isolation

a line: “When you’re in boarding school you imagine how grand and fine the world is, and when you leave you’d sometimes like to hear the sound of the school bell again”

an image: the girl often portrays herself as a captive, describing her girlhood as “senile”, her childhood as “ancient”

a thought: she often seems schooled in holding back from letting others – and us – in to her innermost feelings; “ja” she says when her largely absent father asks if she’s content, before writing: “something immobile about the things we say”

a fact: Jaeggy’s work has been translated into 26 languages

want to read Sweet Days of Discipline? visit here