Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"Vibrant and heartrending....This powerful tale winningly portrays the path from pain to recovery and wholeness." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"As Scego's book explores layers of
time and branches of families, it suggests that no history is ever as
certain as it seems at first glance." New Yorker
Review
"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
About the Author
Igiaba Scego, born in Rome
in 1974 to a family of Somali origins, is a writer and journalist. She
is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, and her
memoir
La mia casa è dove sono won Italy's prestigious Mondello Prize. She is a frequent contributor to the magazine
Internazionale and the supplement to
La Repubblica, Il Venerdì di Repubblica.
Aaron Robertson has written for various publications including
The New York Times, The Nation, n+1, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and more, and he is currently an editor at
Literary Hub. He won a 2018 PEN/Heim grant for his translation of Igiaba Scego's
Beyond Babylon.
Jhumpa Lahiri received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, her debut story collection. She is also the author of The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, and The Lowland, a finalist for both the Man Booker prize and the National Book Award in fiction.