The Window Seat

By: Aminatta Forna

Narrated by: Aminatta Forna

Aminatta Forna is one of our most important literary voices, and her novels have won the Windham Campbell Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book. In this elegantly rendered and wide-ranging collection of new and previously published essays, Forna writes intimately about displacement, trauma, and memory, love, and how we coexist and encroach on the nonhuman world.

Movement is a constant here. In the title piece, “The Window Seat”, she reveals the unexpected enchantments of commercial air travel. In “Obama and the Renaissance Generation”, she documents how, despite the narrative of Obama’s exceptionalism, his father, like her own, was one of a generation of gifted young Africans who came to the United Kingdom and the United States for education and were expected to build their home countries anew after colonialism. In “The Last Vet”, time spent shadowing Dr. Jalloh, the only veterinarian in Sierra Leone, as he works with the street dogs of Freetown becomes a meditation on what a society’s treatment of animals tells us about its principles. In “Crossroads”, she examines race in America from an African perspective, in “Power Walking” she describes what it means to walk in the world in a Black woman’s body, and in “The Watch” she explores the raptures of sleep and sleeplessness the world over.

Deeply meditative and written with a wry humor, The Window Seat confirms that Forna is a vital voice in international letters.

©2021 Aminatta Forna (P)2021 Recorded Books

Amazingly Good Read

These engaging personal essays took me all over the world through the observant, witty, and compassionate mind of a brilliant writer who grew up between cultures, offering fresh and stimulating perspectives. The essays are both intimate and historically grounded, showing the effects of profound social and political upheaval on real lives. I loved the essay “Hame,” in which the author—who grew up in Sierra Leone and British boarding schools—takes us on a visit to her mother’s remote ancestral homeland in the Scottish Islands and muses on the meanings of home. Aminatta Forna’s reading of her own work is beautiful and engaging, as though she is speaking directly to the listener.

Breathtaking and a Pure Delight

This is an insightful collection of essays, life brilliantly observed by the award-winning novelist and memoirist, Aminatta Forna. This book is a pure delight.
I dare you to not be changed by Forna’s fierce, genius perspective. And she reads the book.