Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Book Summary and Reviews of Mosquito by Roma Tearne

Mosquito by Roma Tearne

Mosquito

by Roma Tearne

  • Critics' Consensus (1):
  • Published:
  • Jul 2008, 304 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

Shortlisted for the Costa (Whitbread) 2007 First Novel Award. Published in the USA as a paperback original.

Set adrift by the recent death of his wife, Theo Samarajeeva abandons his comfortable writer’s life in London and returns to Sri Lanka, his war-torn homeland. There he meets Nulani, a talented and enigmatic young artist. An unorthodox and tenuous love blossoms between this unlikely pair. Nulani finally feels love, and Theo sees hope in his future. But when the insurgency explodes, their precarious world is torn apart. Theo is held captive and stripped of everything he once held dear. Nulani is forced into exile. As the years pass, and the poison of war spreads across this paradise, will their love be lost forever? By turns heartbreaking and uplifting, Mosquito is a first novel of remarkable beauty and compelling power.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Tearne captures the desperation, fear and hope of love during wartime, showing multiple sides of the human capacity for survival." - Publishers Weekly.

"Starred Review. With vividly rendered tropical seascapes and jungles, and populated by philosophical servants and petulant power-mongers, this novel offers a moving May-December love story set against a conflict in which the warring parties ultimately become Violence and Art. Wholly satisfying." - Kirkus Reviews.

"[A] lovely, vividly described novel . . . [set] against a background of lush scenery and looming civil war." - The Times.

"Flashes of true beauty, along with an impressively sustained forward drive, are enough to make Mosquito an engaging and thought-provoking novel." - Times Literary Supplement.

"Roma Tearne’s novel of love and war is a heartrending story . . . the book is also about hope and survival." - Christopher Ondaatje, The Spectator.

This information about Mosquito 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.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Information

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more literary fiction...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: James
    James
    by Percival Everett
    The Oscar-nominated film American Fiction (2023) and the Percival Everett novel it was based on, ...
  • Book Jacket
    But the Girl
    by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu
    Jessica Zhan Mei Yu's But the Girl begins with the real-life disappearance of Malaysia Airlines ...
  • Book Jacket: Patriot
    Patriot
    by Alexei Navalny
    On the 17th of January, 2024, colleagues of Alexei Navalny posted a message to his Instagram account...
  • Book Jacket: Rental House
    Rental House
    by Weike Wang
    For many of us, vacations offer an escape from the everyday — a chance to explore new places, ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters
A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl disappears, leaving a mystery unsolved for fifty years.
Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

A book is one of the most patient of all man's inventions.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.