Samatar's sensual descriptions create a rich, strange landscape, allowing a lavish adventure to unfold that is haunting and unforgettable.
--Library Journal *starred review*
Thoroughly engaging and thoroughly original. A story of ghosts and books, treachery and mystery, ingeniously conceived and beautifully written. One of the best fantasy novels I've read in recent years.--Jeffrey Ford
Mesmerizing--a sustained and dreamy enchantment. A Stranger in Olondria reminds both Samatar's characters and her readers of the way stories make us long for faraway, even imaginary, places and how they also bring us home again.--Karen Joy Fowler
Gorgeous writing, beautiful and sensual and so precise--a Proustian ghost story.--Paul Witcover
Imagine an inlaid cabinet, its drawers within drawers filled with spices, roses, amulets, bright cities, bones, and shadows. Sofia Samatar is a merchant of wonders, and her A Stranger in Olondria is a bookshop of dreams.--Greer Gilman
In this hypnotic debut Jevik the pepper merchant's son dreams of far Olondria. Raised by his tutors on the written dreams of the distant city, when he gets the opportunity to travel there, his life is thrown off track when he is haunted by the ghost of a girl whom he must face down before he can go free. Reading has never been so seductive, so dangerous.
Sofia Samatar is an American of Somali and Swiss German Mennonite background. Her writing has appeared in Clarkesworld, Stone Telling, Apex, and Strange Horizons. She wrote A Stranger in Olondria in Yambio, South Sudan, where she worked as an English teacher. She has worked in Egypt and now lives in the USA with her family.
About the Author :
Sofia Samatar is an American of Somali and Swiss German Mennonite background. Her writing has appeared in Clarkesworld, Stone Telling, and Strange Horizons. She wrote A Stranger in Olondria in Yambio, South Sudan, where she worked as an English teacher. She has worked in Egypt and is pursuing a PhD in African Languages and literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Review :
Samatar's sensual descriptions create a rich, strange landscape, allowing a lavish adventure to unfold that is haunting and unforgettable.
--Library Journal (*starred review*) "Sofia Samatar has an expansive imagination, a poetic and elegant style, and she writes stories so rich, with characters so full of life, they haunt you long after the story ends. A real pleasure."
--Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and The Virgin of Flames
A book about the love of books. Her sentences are intoxicating and one can easily be lost in their intricacy.... Samatar's beautifully written book is one that will be treasured by book lovers everywhere."
--Raul M. Chapa, BookPeople, Austin, TX
Thoroughly engaging and thoroughly original. A story of ghosts and books, treachery and mystery, ingeniously conceived and beautifully written. One of the best fantasy novels I've read in recent years.--Jeffrey Ford, author of The Girl in the Glass
Mesmerizing--a sustained and dreamy enchantment. A Stranger in Olondria reminds both Samatar's characters and her readers of the way stories make us long for far-away, even imaginary, places and how they also bring us home again.
--Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of The Jane Austen Book Club and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Gorgeous writing, beautiful and sensual and so precise--a Proustian ghost story.
--Paul Witcover, author of Tumbling After
Let the world take note of this dazzling and accomplished fantasy. Sofia Samatar's debut novel is both exhilarating epic adventure and loving invocation of what it means to live through story, poetry, language. She writes like the heir of Ursula K. Le Guin and Gene Wolfe.
--Kelly Link, author of Magic for Beginners
Imagine an inlaid cabinet, its drawers within drawers filled with spices, roses, amulets, bright cities, bones, and shadows. Sofia Samatar is a merchant of wonders, and her A Stranger in Olondria is a bookshop of dreams.
--Greer Gilman, author of Cloud & Ashes
