Adua

In her lucid and forthright novel, Italian novelist/journalist Scego—born to Somali parents who fled the 1969 coup d'état—examines the linked consequences of Italian colonization, instability in 1970s Somalia, and the current refugee crisis in Europe. Adua, whose mother died in childbirth, was seven or eight when her father, Zoppe, arrived to take her from caretakers in the bush to the big city. An interpreter for Mussolini's regime, Zoppe landed in Rome and suffered extreme prejudice and imprisonment for his black skin, experiences that hardened him and that serve as an effective counterpoint to Adua's own experiences after she herself flees to Rome. Adua was driven out by sectarian violence and the cruelty of her father. But now Somalia's civil war is over, her father has died, and she has an inherited the family home. Should she return? In Rome, she has a much younger husband, a refugee she married to help him after his arduous Mediterranean crossing and for whom she feels responsible. But her identity could lie in the other direction.