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by Irene Sabatini
Harare, 2000: Gabrielle is a newly-qualified lawyer fighting for justice for a young girl. Ben is an urbane and charismatic junior diplomat attached to Harare with the American embassy.
With high-level pressure on Gabrielle to drop the case, and the president's youth wing terrorizing his political opponents as he tightens his grip on power, they begin a tentative love affair. But when they fall victim to a shocking attack, their lives splinter across continents and their stories diverge, forcing Gabrielle on a painful journey towards self-realization. Irene Sabatini, winner of the 2010 Orange Award for New Writers, navigates Zimbabwe's unfolding political crises, showing how the dehumanizing effects of state-sponsored violence can shape and remake a life. An Act of Defiance is a sweeping political drama about a young woman's fight for love and agency in turbulent times.
"Raw, moving and utterly compelling. Sabatini has written an incisive and unflinching novel." —Tendai Huchu, author, The Hairdresser of Harare
"A brave novel about conscience and trauma, justice and fear, and the struggle to regain strength after the near destruction of the soul." —Helen Benedict, author, Wolf Season
This information about An Act of Defiance 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.
Irene Sabatini spent her childhood in Bulawayo in Zimbabwe. After attending the University of Zimbabwe in Harare, she moved to Colombia, where she worked as a teacher. She has a masters degree in child development from the Institute of Education at University College London. Irene is the author of two previous novels; her debut novel, The Boy Next Door
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