The Hired Man

"A poignant story about friendship, betrayal, obsession and second chances ... Bold, deeply moving and accomplished, [Forna’s novel] confirms her place among the most talented writers in literature today."--Commonwealth Writers’ Prize judges on The Memory of Love

Aminatta Forna, winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and named one of Africa’s most promising new writers by Vanity Fair, has been widely acclaimed for her novels of love, loss, and absolution set against the backdrop of her native, war-torn Sierra Leone. In her latest book, The Hired Man, she turns her keen eye for rich psychological portraiture and precise storytelling to a small town still coping with the aftermath of Croatia’s war of independence. Narrated by a local man who is hired by a British family to fix up their recently acquired summer house in the town, The Hired Man deftly peels back the layers of the outwardly placid community to reveal its long-buried truths--secrets the hired man is keeping from the family about the town, the war, and the still-festering conflicts between the townspeople.

When an English family moves into the run-down "blue house” in the small Croatian town of Gost, their neighbor, stoical forty-five-year-old Duro Kolak, is quick to offer his services for the renovation, and the young, attractive English matriarch, Laura, gratefully hires him for the summer. But as Duro sets about making improvements to the property, it becomes apparent that the blue house is almost too well-known to him, and the family’s arrival soon becomes entwined with an onrush of old memories that reveal the true history of Gost and its enigmatic inhabitants: Duro’s childhood love, Anka Pavic, who has been missing since the end of the war; her sinister brother, Krešimir, once Duro’s closest friend and now his most despised emy&en; and the lascivious Fabjan, owner of the local bar, whose nocturnal visits to spy on the blue house and its new English inhabitants become increasingly menacing. As Duro strives to shield Laura and her children from the townspeople’s rising bitterness towards the English interlopers, he is drawn ever deeper into his wartime memories--probing into the complex web of relations that form Gost, and shedding light on his heart-rending personal history and his own fractured relationship with the town.

A masterful, nuanced tale, The Hired Man expertly examines the power of communal bonds, betrayals, and loss, the ravages of Croatian military history, and the limits of cultural exchange, of memory and, ultimately, of identity.

Praise for The Memory of Love:

"A remarkable feat of storytelling... [and] a thrilling story of friendship and betrayal.”--Karen Holt, Essence Magazine

"Often darkly funny, written with gritty realism and tenderness, The Memory of Love is a profoundly affecting work.”--Kiran Desai, winner of the Man Booker Prize for The Inheritance of Loss

"[A] luminous tale of passion and betrayal.”--Maaza Mengiste, The New York Times Book Review

"[An] elegantly rendered novel of loss and rehabilitation...[that] coalesces into an ambitious exploration of trauma and storytelling.” --Jessica Loudis, San Francisco Chronicle

"The real pleasure of Forna’s storytelling is in her scrutiny of her characters’ inner lives and her ability to connect their choices to the moral dilemmas of a traumatized society.”--The New Yorker