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A young girl grows jealous of her mother’s lemon tree, which may be more sentient than she knows. A college student confronts tragedies past and present when police attack a university protest. A lawyer desperately searches the city for a woman claiming to have been sent from the Hereafter.
In her second collection of stories after Thirteen Months of Sunrise, which was named a finalist for the 2020 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, the unique voice of Sudanese writer and poet Rania Mamoun is on full display. Under the Neem Tree, her first collection to be published in the United States, now in a wonderful translation by Elisabeth Jaquette, is a powerful and intimate collection that blends fiction with memoir to create a rich, multifaceted portrait of Sudanese women—one with a magical edge.
From unexpected love to political defiance, Mamoun brings tenderness and a poetic sensibility to tales of human connection. Grounded in the reality of life and politics in Sudan, while also laced with elements of the surreal and uncanny, these twelve stories will be embraced by fans of Claire Keegan and Marie NDiaye, and by English-language readers eager for emotionally intimate characters, deeply human stories, and a striking, unique voice.
Praise for Under the Neem Tree:
“Stories like illuminated spheres that revolve into an enthralling novelistic experience. Harrowing and brutal but also tender and sensory; this is a portrait of the activist as a young Sudanese woman.”—Leila Abouela, FRSL
“Raina Mamoun is a brilliant observer of the world, delivering us gemlike vignettes — short stories that are more snapshot than narrative. By design, it’s not the plots that dazzle, but rather the individual captured moments and starting insights into the human condition.”—Rebecca Makkai
Rania Mamoun is a Sudanese activist and writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She is the author of the poetry collection Something Evergreen Called Life, the story collection Thirteen Months of Sunrise, as well as two novels in Arabic. She has been a Writer in Residence at the City of Asylum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, since 2019.