Overview

A kaleidoscopic novel spanning generations and continents, that reveals the connections between four women in their struggle for survival. A woman in 15th century West Africa named Ada buries her child and confronts a Portuguese enslaver. A woman in Victorian England named Ada Lovelace, a mathematical genius and computer programming pioneer, tries to hide her affair with Charles Dickens from her husband. A woman named Ada, imprisoned in a concentration camp at Mittelbau-Dora in 1945, will survive one more day in enforced prostitution. Connected by an unknown but sentient spirit, and a bracelet of fertility beads that each Ada encounters at a pivotal moment in her life, these women share a name and a purpose. As their interwoven narratives converge on a modern day Ada, a young Ghanaian woman who finds herself pregnant, alone, in Berlin, searching for a home before her baby arrives, their shared spirit will find a way to help her break the vicious cycle of injustice. This novel is a feat of imagination and breaks down simplistic notions of history as a straight line; one woman's experience matters to another's 400 years later, on a different continent. In this deeply moving, at times mordantly funny, ultimately hopeful book, there is a connection between all those fighting for love, for family, for justice, for a home.

Full Product Details

9780593539804

Table of Contents

Reviews

Praise for Ada's Room ""Thrillingly, astonishingly original. You will not have read anything quite like this before."" --R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries ""[A] novel that demands a great deal emotionally and intellectually of the reader, but its boldness and ambition leave an indelible imprint. A rule-shattering novel about the presentness of the past."" --Kirkus ""An impressive and highly original work, brimming over with energy."" - Times Literary Supplement ""Sharon Dodua Otoo is the new voice in German literature.... Her debut novel goes big."" --Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger ""Otoo is a singular voice in contemporary German literature.... [A] daring experiment, not unlike Yaa Gyasi's debut novel, Homegoing."" --Der Tagesspiegel ""By effortlessly moving between centuries in her novel, Sharon Dodua Otoo reveals not only the weight of history that comes to bear on a young Black woman in dire circumstances who is looking for a home - it also demonstrates which patterns have remained powerful to this day."" --Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Author Information

Sharon Dodua Otoo is the winner of the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize and will be the Schroeder Writer-in-Residence at the University of Cambridge in 2022. She is active with the Initiative Schwarze Menschen and is affiliated with the Black queer feminist association ADEFRA. A writer and activist born in London, she lives in Berlin and writes in German. This is her first novel. Jon Cho-Polizzi is an Assistant Professor of German at the University of Michigan, and a literary translator. He lives and works between Ann Arbor, Northern California, and Berlin.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available