Aminatta Forna

Aminatta Forna (* November 1964 in Glasgow, Scotland) is a British writer.

Life

Aminatta Forna was born in Glasgow. Her father Mohamed Forna was born in Sierra Leone, and her mother Maureen Christison was from Scotland. When she was six months old, the family moved to Sierra Leone. Her mother divorced in 1970. Forna lived with her two siblings and her father and stepmother in Sierra Leone. 1975 her father was executed for treason in Sierra Leone.

Forna studied law at University College London and then at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1989 to 1999 Forna worked as a journalist for the BBC. She realized documentaries on issues of culture and politics.

Aminatta Forna lives in London and is married to the designer Simon Westcott.

Work

In her first novel The Devil did Danced on the Water, she described her father's history. Ancestor Stones was released in 2006 and tells the story of four African women. With the novel The Memory of Love she won the 2011 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Bibliography

• The Devil did Danced on the Water. Grove Press, New York 2002, ISBN 0-8021-4048-3.
• Ancestor Stones. Atlantic Monthly Press, New York 2006, ISBN 0-87113-944-8. German: Ancestor Stones. Translated by Sabine Schwenk. Berlin -Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-8270-0735-3.

• German: A song from the past. Translated by Giovanni and Ditte Bandini Bandini. German publishing house, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-421-04522-5.

Awards

• 2008 LiBeraturpreis for Ancestor Stones
• 2011 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for The Memory of Love