An epic spread across three nations, Beyond Babylon casts a probing, endlessly perceptive eye on the lasting effects of traumas both national and personal. Telling the engrossing lives of two half-sisters who meet coincidentally in Tunisia, their mothers, and the elusive father who ties all their stories together, Igiaba Scego's virtuosic novel spreads thickly over Argentina's horrific dirty war, the chaotic final years of Siad Barre's brutal dictatorship in Somalia-which ended in catastrophic civil war-and the modern-day excesses of Italy's right-wing politics.
United by the Italian government's attempts to establish authoritarian politics in Somalia, Argentina, and at home, Scego's kaleidoscopic plot investigates deep questions about our complicity in the governments that we often feel powerless to affect. In its myriad characters, locations, and languages, it brings new definition to identity in a fast-changing world of migrants and political upheaval. Most of all, Scego's five poignant lives anchor this sprawling work as they fight to build family ties while overcoming past violations, including governmental torture and sexual assault. A masterwork equally as adept with the lives of nations as those of human beings, Beyond Babylon brings much-needed insight, compassion, and understanding to our turbulent world.
"Igiaba Scego is one of the most prominent voices of a new cohort of black writers in Italy."
Africa Is a Country
"A prolific writer of novels, short stories, and essays for Italian newspapers and magazines, Scego belongs to a group of contemporary authors of African descent who have been articulating fraught dynamics of belonging to Italian society and literature."
Public Books
"What a wonderful, shocking, heartbreaking, exciting book, and how better to tell this story than through Aaron Robertson's entrancing and pitch-perfect translation."
Jennifer Croft, Man Booker International Prize–winning translator and author
