Description

Named a Most Anticipated Book by Vogue and Vulture

Alternately whimsical sweet and dark this astonishing debut novel about a lonely girl waiting for her mother brims with uncompromisingly African magical realism The New York Times

Ayosa is a wandering spiritjoyous exuberant filled to the brim with longing Her only companions in her grandmothers crumbling house are as lonely as Ayosa herself the ghostly Fatumas whose eyes are the size of bay windows who teach her to dance and wail at the death news the JollyAnnas cruel birds who cover their solitude with spiteful laughter the milkman who never greets Ayosa and whose milk tastes of mud and Sindano the kind owner of a caf no one ever visits Unexpectedly miraculously one day Ayosa finds a friend Yet she is always fixed on her beautiful mama Nabumbo Promise a mysterious and aloof photographer she comes and goes as she pleases with no apology or warning

Set at the intersection of the spirit world and the human one Things They Lost sets out a rich and magical vision of girlhood as a time of complexity laced with unparalleled creativity and expansion Vogue Heartbreaking elegant and written in giddily exuberant prose Financial Times its a story about connection comingofage and the dizzying dualities of love at its most intoxicating and allencompassing