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A Novel
by Tarisai Ngangura
A wrenching love story and literary debut following two strangers whose paths converge in a series of seemingly chance encounters and shared histories.
On a bus moving across rural landscapes from town to town, two young people are escaping with nothing to hold except hope. She has committed a horrifying act for which there will certainly be retribution. He is staggering from a devastating discovery. They will find each other and attempt to move forward, even as their grief leaves wounds on their new beginnings.
Seamlessly transitioning between past lives and present realities, The Ones We Loved tenderly weaves both myth and memory into an account of two people desperate for connection and yearning for a place to belong. They will find sunflowers carrying death, rivers that whisper secrets and trees that will see it all.
The Ones We Loved is told in the rhythms of oral retellings practiced in Zimbabwe, where a ngano (story)—its melodies, pauses and lifts—creates a call-and-response with the audience. It is a breathtakingly beautiful story about the homes we leave behind, the lonely voices that find us and the painful consequences of experiencing a love that has never known how to let go.
"The prose flows like poetry and is all encompassing…The Ones We Loved is a lyrical, brilliant, and unforgettable debut." —Booklist
"The Ones We Loved is a literary cat burglar. Steals your breath. Makes off with your time before you see it gone. Pockets your heart and hands it back—rewired. Tarisai Ngangura has penned a haunting, unforgettable story about a shattered girl and a shattered boy rebuilding their lives on the thinnest reeds of hope." —Lawrence Hill, award-winning author of The Book of Negroes
This information about The Ones We Loved was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tarisai Ngangura is a journalist and photographer. Born and raised in Zimbabwe, she completed her post-secondary education at what was then Ryerson University in Canada. Reporting from Brazil, Canada and the US, her essays and interviews have appeared in Rookie Mag, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, Lapham's Quarterly and the Globe and Mail. Previously at Vanity Fair, Ngangura currently splits her time between Toronto and Manhattan. The Ones We Loved is her debut novel. You can find her on tumblr (https://writing-drinkingtea.tumblr.com) where she'll answer all your questions.
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