"The Memory of Love" weaves together the stories of three men all struggling in the aftermath of civil war in contemporary Sierra Leone. Aminatta Forna, who was born in Scotland and raised in West Africa, has been called one of Africa's most promising writers. A New York Times reviewer wrote that "The Memory of Love" is a novel that "forces us to see past bland categorizations like 'postcolonial African literature,' showing that the world we inhabit reaches beyond borders and ripples out through generations."
