They Will Drown in Their Mothers' Tears
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the prestigious August Prize for best Work of Literary Fiction
In the midst of a terrorist attack on a bookstore reading by Göran Loberg, a comic book artist famous for demeaning drawings of the prophet Mohammed, one of the attackers, a young woman, has a sudden premonition that something is wrong, changing the course of history. Two years later, this unnamed woman invites a famous writer to visit her in the criminal psychiatric clinic where she’s living. She then shares with him an incredible story—she is a visitor from an alternate future.
Despite discrepancies that make the writer highly skeptical, he becomes increasingly fascinated by her amazing tale: in her dystopian future, any so-called “anti-Swedish” citizens are forced into a horrific ghetto called The Rabbit Yard. As events begin to spiral and the author becomes more and more implicated in this woman’s tale, he comes to believe the unbelievable: she’s telling the truth.
A remarkably intense, beautifully wrought tale that combines the ingenuity of speculative fiction with the difficulties of today’s harsh political realities, They Will Drown in Their Mothers’ Tears is the groundbreaking, award-winning work from the bestselling Swedish-Ugandan author Johannes Anyuru. With echoes of Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, the Charlie Hebdo tragedy, and anti-immigrant hysteria, this largest and most complex novel from an already celebrated poet, author, and spoken word artist catapults him to the front ranks of world writers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mixing past, present, and future, Anyuru's latest (after the poetry collection Only the Gods Are New) centers around a violent act that ripples through alternate versions of time. During a terrorist attack at a Swedish bookstore on an author who draws depictions of Mohammed, one of the terrorists feels herself sliding out of time, flashing to a future where the attack will change the life of Muslims in Sweden. As visions of Muslim families in ghettos and a concentration camp flash before her eyes, she makes a decision that changes the course of history. Years later in a psychiatric facility, she tells her story to a famous Muslim author. She claims to be a visitor from an alternative future that would have happened had she not changed history in the bookstore, and draws a horrifying picture of what could have been: a Sweden of anti-Muslim laws and medical experiments on Muslims. The narrative moves between her upbringing, the events leading up to the attack, her time in prison, and chapters written by the author she is addressing as he struggles with her impossible narrative. The depth of Anyuru's work grows, revealing shocking connections between the young woman and the author interviewing her. In gorgeous prose, Anyuru's potent story addresses today's anti-immigrant rhetoric and the grim future it could create.
