by Sofia Samatar, 2013
“But preserve your mistrust of the page, for a book is a fortress, a place of weeping, the key to a desert, a river that has no bridge, a garden of spears.”
Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger In Olondria is the story of a young man, Jevick, son of a wealthy pepper merchant. He has lived all his sheltered life in his homeland of Tyom, longing to leave it for mainland Olondria and its legendary city Bain. Cosmopolitan and sophisticated, Bain represents everything Tyom does not, a place (and the subject) of legends, books and high culture. On his first visit to sell his father’s peppers, Bain exceeds his imagination, but he finds himself literally haunted by the ghost of a girl from his homeland, a condition…
