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The Memory of Love
Aminatta Forna
Novel, 2010
Set in Freetown after the civil war, it follows hospital life and how memory and trauma linger in the city.
Books set in Sierra Leone
Seven books that put you in Sierra Leone. Six are by writers from Sierra Leone and set there, starting with The Memory of Love and A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. The other is a wider pick, by someone who knows the place well.
About the literature of Sierra Leone
Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone is a boy soldier's memoir of Sierra Leone's civil war in the 1990s, and one of the best-known books from the country. Writers from Sierra Leone mostly publish in English, the official language, while Krio, an English-based creole, is widely spoken. Syl Cheney-Coker's The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar is a magical-realist saga that traces Creole settler history in Freetown, called Malagueta, across two centuries.
Aminatta Forna's The Memory of Love, set in Freetown after the war, is the place to start; hospital life in the city shows how memory and trauma linger. Mariatu Kamara's The Bite of the Mango gives a young woman's account of rural life, the war's violence and the amputee camps of Freetown. Much of the writing returns to the civil war and its aftermath.
By writers from Sierra Leone
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A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Ishmael Beah
Memoir, 2007
A boy's experience of Sierra Leone's 1990s civil war in the countryside, showing how the conflict tore through villages and childhood.
The Devil That Danced on the Water
Aminatta Forna
Memoir, 2002
A memoir of her father, a politician executed in 1975, tracing post-independence Sierra Leonean politics and family life.
Radiance of Tomorrow
Ishmael Beah
Novel, 2014
Villagers return to a ruined hill town after the war and try to rebuild community amid corruption and mining interests.
The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar
Syl Cheney-Coker
Novel, 1990
A sweeping magical-realist saga of Freetown, called Malagueta, tracing Creole settler history across two centuries.
The Bite of the Mango
Mariatu Kamara
Memoir, 2008
A young woman's memoir of rural Sierra Leone, the war's violence, and her journey through Freetown's amputee camps.
Wider picks
By long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well, or folk tales, poetry and history with a strong feel for Sierra Leone.
The Second Round
Lenrie Peters
Novel, 1965
Wider pick: By a Gambian writer who studied in Freetown
A novel of a Freetown doctor returning from Britain to 1960s Sierra Leone, caught between modern ambitions and local realities.
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