A breathtaking novel from Orange Prize-shortlisted & Commonwealth Writers` Prize-winning author Aminatta Forna Waterloo Bridge, London. Two strangers collide. Attila, a Ghanaian psychiatrist, & Jean, an American studying the habits of urban foxes. From this chance encounter in the midst of the rush of a great city, numerous moments of connections span out & interweave, bringing disparate lives together. Attila has arrived in London with two tasks: to deliver a keynote speech on trauma & to check up on the daughter of friends, his `niece`, Ama, who hasn`t called home in a while. It soon emerges that she has been swept up in an immigration crackdown
- & now her young son Tano is missing. When, by chance, Attila bumps into Jean again, she joins him in his search for Tano, mobilizing into action the network she has built up, mainly from the many West African immigrants working London`s myriad streets, of volunteer fox-spotters: security guards, hotel doormen, traffic wardens. All unite to help & as the search continues, a deepening friendship between Attila & Jean unfolds. In this delicate yet powerful novel of loves lost & new, of past griefs & of the hidden side of a teeming metropolis, Aminatta Forna asks us to consider the values of the society we live in, our co-existence with one another & all living creatures
- & the true nature of happiness.