![]() ![]() ![]() With no known relatives, the orphaned child is taken in by Sufis, who feed her on a diet of the Koran and mystical self-denial. Born in the U.K., she grew up in Toronto, and her inevitable sense of estrangement from home is here embodied by Lilly Abdal, the daughter of two British proto-hippies who die in a Moroccan drug deal gone wrong. That it concerns East African Muslims, both at home in Ethiopia and in exile in London, only adds timeliness to a book that's already brimming over with an irresistible plot and great social significance.Ĭamilla Gibb, currently being touted by the English press as a young writer to watch, knows the ex-pat's lot. Sweetness in the Belly is one of those near-perfect fictions: a sustained flight of imagination backed up by firsthand experience, with a sympathetic but alluringly outré central character and a teeming, colourful supporting cast. ![]() Doubleday Canada, 415 pp, $32.95, hardcover. ![]()
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