Elsewhere Home

by Leila Aboulela

Overview

In her new collection of stories, award-winning New York Times Notable author Leila Aboulela offers us a rich tableau of life as an immigrant abroad, and the challenges of navigating assimilation and difference. Elsewhere, Home draws us ineluctably into the lives of her characters as they forge new identities and reshape old ones.

A young woman’s encounter with a former classmate elicits painful reminders of her former life in Khartoum. A wealthy Sudanese student studying in Aberdeen begins an unlikely friendship with a Scottish man. A woman experiences an evolving relationship to her favorite writer, whose portrait of their shared culture both reflects and conflicts with her own sense of identity.

Shuttling between the dusty, sunbaked streets of Khartoum and the university halls and cramped apartments of Aberdeen and London, Elsewhere, Home explores, with subtlety and restraint, the profound feelings of yearning, loss, and alienation that come with leaving one’s homeland in pursuit of a different life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781846592119
Publisher:	Telegram Books
Publication date:	07/01/2018
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

LEILA ABOULELA is the first ever winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. Her novels include The Kindness of Enemies, The Translator (longlisted for the Orange Prize), Minaret and Lyrics Alley, which was Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. Her work has been translated into fifteen languages. She grew up in Khartoum, Sudan, and now lives in Aberdeen, Scotland.

Read an Excerpt

Her country disturbed him. It reminded him of the first time he had held a human bone, the touching simplicity of it, the strength. Such was the landscape of Khartoum; bone-coloured sky, a purity in the desert air, bareness. A bit austere and therefore static. But he was driven by feelings, that was why he was here, that was why he had crossed boundaries and seas, and now walked through a blaze of hot air from the airplane steps to the terminal. She was waiting for him outside the airport, wearing national dress, a pale orange to be that made her appear even more slender than she was. I mustn’t kiss you. No, she laughed, you mustn’t. He had forgotten how vibrant she was, how happy she made him feel. She talked, asked him questions. Did you have a good trip, are you hungry, did all your luggage arrive, were they nice to you in customs, I missed you too. There was a catch in her voice when she said that; in spite of her confidence she was shy. Come, come and meet my brother. They began to walk across a car park that was disorganised and dusty, the sun gleaming on the cars.

Her brother was leaning against a dilapidated Toyota. He was lanky with a hard-done-by expression. He looked irritated. Perhaps by the conflicting desire to get his sister off his hands and his misgivings about her marrying a foreigner. How did he see him now, through those narrow eyes, how did he judge him?

Editorial Reviews

If literary realism attempts to hold a mirror to the world, then Leila Aboulela's Elsewhere, Home is an especially vivid reflection in a pond, as accurate as glass's gaze but rippled to capture life as a thing shivering and fluid even when seemingly still…One marvels at a sort of uniformity in this quiet collection that transcends theme, setting, subject. Critics sometimes speak of writers as having "found their voices," but this book is a testament to one who's always had hers. Moving gracefully between scenes, that consistent voice familiarizes us with not just the characters, but the author herself…The editor John Freeman has called her "one of the best short story writers alive," and this is one blurb that's no exaggeration. Elsewhere, Home is a perfect introduction to a writer whose fiction doesn't stray too far from home—she has a lot in common with her Muslim, Cairo-born, Khartoum-raised, Aberdeen-transplant characters—while still embracing a multiplicity of merging, clashing worlds. Hers is the first collection I've read since James Joyce's Dubliners that reminded me of the life-changing power of furiously honest realism.

The New York Times Book Review - Porochista Khakpour

★ 10/22/2018
This fantastic collection of stories from Aboulela (Lyrics Alley) examines the alienation of individuals torn between two societies. The 13 tales involve disparate protagonists, but all focus on culture, religion, and identity. In “Something Old, Something New,” a Scotsman travels to Khartoum to marry his Sudanese fiancée. In “The Boy from the Kebab Shop,” the secular daughter of a Scottish father and Egyptian mother finds herself attracted to a devout Muslim man. “The Museum” features a doomed romance between an affluent Sudanese student and a provincial but brilliant Scottish classmate. The collection’s highlight, “Souvenirs,” follows an oil rig worker searching for paintings in Khartoum in order to show his Scottish wife the “malleable pieces, not the random whole” that represent his complex childhood and nation. Each story is earnest and engrossing, holding surprising depth for tales so compact. Aboulela confronts and dissects Western and African stereotypes of Islam, Muslims, and immigrants, and beautifully renders the more universal challenge of cultural homelessness. Eleven of these stories have been previously published, and read together, they wonderfully coalesce. Visiting many of the themes she grapples with in her novels, Aboulela ties together her expanding oeuvre with this poignant, impressive collection. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Elsewhere, Home

Winner of the 2018 Saltire Literary Award

“If literary realism attempts to hold a mirror to the world, Leila Aboulela’s Elsewhere, Home is an especially vivid reflection . . . Hers is the first collection I’ve read since James Joyce’s Dubliners that reminded me of the life-changing power of furiously honest realism.”— New York Times Book Review

“From the title on, Leila Aboulela's sixth book asks readers to consider what it means to have a home, to leave a home behind, and to make a new one. . . . Aboulela excels at giving equal weight not only to the high-stakes drama of cultural differences, but also more focused concepts, like a schoolgirl's nearsightedness in "Farida's Eyes," or a restaurant worker's inability to cook rice . . . In the details, we see that these themes aren't about being Sudanese or British specifically, but the simultaneous sense of belonging and alienation familiar to us all.”— BookBrowse

“[B]eautiful and full of easy dialog and insight . . . Though she tackles many heavier, broader themes in her writing, Aboulela excels most at portraying the nuances of day-to-day life and the pains of missing and returning home.”— Bustle

“Connected by a consistent authenticity, these stories display a virtuosity in building on the most relatable emotional hooks: prewedding nerves, pregnancy stress, or economic anxiety. Aboulela’s remarkable collection offers a strong and sympathetic illumination of the social and spiritual price that migration demands even when it does deliver on an economic promise.”— Booklist (starred review)

“Each story is earnest, engrossing, holding surprising depth for tales so compact. Aboulela confronts and dissects Western and African stereotypes of Islam, Muslims, and immigrants, and beautifully renders the more universal challenge of cultural homelessness."— Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

“A yearning for home tugs at the souls of Aboulela’s characters in this beautiful and desolate collection…There is so much quiet brilliance [here]."— Guardian

“A lovely collection of short stories about love, loneliness and spirituality.”—Nadiya Hussein, Good Housekeeping

“Elsewhere, Home is a rich and poignant reflection of a Britain built as ever from multiple perspectives and starting points…These beautifully focused tales of Khartoum, Edinburgh, London, Cairo and beyond are a delight.”—A.L. Kennedy

“[Aboulela] is one of the best short story writers alive. Publishing her at Granta Magazine and Freeman’s has been one of the highlights of my life as an editor.”—John Freeman

"Exquisite fiction. There are gems here, elegantly cut, polished and framed. Luminous.”—Fadia Faqir

“Full of elegance, tenderness and the small vulnerabilities that make up our lives.”—Roma Tearne

Praise for The Kindness of Enemies

“Aboulela has written a book for grownups…that speaks more forcefully than a thousand opinion pieces…timeless.”—Anthony Marra, San Francisco Chronicle

“An absorbing novel…reminds us of the complexity of the web woven by those threads of faith, nationality, politics and history.”— New York Times Book Review

“A rich, multilayered story…compelling.”— The Washington Post

“Radiant with historical detail and vivid descriptions…an invitation to see identity as more variegated than the either/or distillations of the Global War on Terror.”— Los Angeles Review of Books

From the Publisher

02/01/2019

This collection by award-winning Sudanese author Aboulela offers 13 stories united by themes of loneliness and homesickness. With settings ranging from Khartoum to London to Aberdeen, these tales explore multilayered tensions originating in religious, gender, cultural, and class differences. "The Museum," for instance, recalls the first date between a smart working-class Scottish boy who has been helping a young Sudanese classmate master their shared graduate coursework. Like "The Museum," which won Aboulela the first Caine Prize for African writing, other stories illuminate the challenges that can beset mixed-race couples. Not the least is the inability to appreciate one's own biases or to understand fully a partner's experience as other. In "Something Old, Something New," a white Muslim convert visits Khartoum for the first time to meet his beloved's family and discovers that "her country disturbed him." In "Souvenirs," the Scottish wife of a Sudanese man refuses to visit Khartoum with him but asks that he bring home an exotic gift upon his return to Edinburgh. VERDICT Aboulela succeeds because her characters are neither neatly defined nor one-dimensional, though the milieus can become repetitive. Several stories were included in 2001's Coloured Lights, and most have been published elsewhere, which recommends this collection especially for libraries that have not already discovered this accomplished author. [See Prepub Alert, 8/20/18.]—Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis

Library Journal

2018-11-13

Tales that take readers from Scotland to Sudan.

Aboulela has earned international acclaim for her fiction. Her work has appeared in prestigious journals, and one story republished here—"The Museum"—won the Caine Prize for African writing. In novels like Minaret (2005) and The Translator (1999), the author has given voice to characters who choose to—or are forced to—navigate two worlds, and she explores themes of immigration, alienation, and assimilation in the stories collected here. A chance encounter with a former classmate on a flight from Sudan to England compels a young woman to reconsider the choices she's made in "The Ostrich." The heroine of "Summer Maze" is the teenager Nadia; when the girl leaves her home in London to visit Egypt with her mother, Aboulela captures the complexity of her identity in passages like this one: "In Cairo, she was a stranger, but a stranger who went unnoticed, who was not tricked into paying extra for taxi rides and souvenirs." A Scottish convert to Islam travels to Khartoum to meet his fiancee's family in "Something Old, Something New," and his experience isn't quite what he expects. "He had thought, from the books he'd read and the particular British Islam he had been exposed to, that in a Muslim country he would find elegance and reason. Instead he found melancholy, a sensuous place, life stripped to the bare bones." Such passages of clarity and insight are all too rare in this collection, though. Aboulela seldom dips beneath the surface of the narrative, and, when she does, she doesn't linger. Given that so many of the settings and situations are similar across these stories, a sense of sameness sets in. And some of the shorter entries feel more like writing exercises or gestures toward a story than finished works.

An uneven collection from a gifted writer.

Kirkus Reviews