Sad and funny and bitter and true, a novel about grief, discovering
your own story, and trying to listen for those stories that are not
yours to tell.
August 2014. Two friends, writers Damaris Caleemootoo and Oliver Pablo
Herzberg, arrive in Edinburgh from London, the city that killed
Daniel--his brother, her frenemy and loved by them both. Every day is
different but the same. Trying to get to the library, they get
distracted by bickering--will it rain or not and what should they do
about their tanking bitcoin?--in the end failing to write or resist the
sadness which follows them as they drift around the city.
On such a day they meet Diego, a poet. They learn that Diego's mother
was from the Chagos Archipelago, that she and her community were forced
to leave their ancestral islands by soldiers in 1973 to make way for a
military base. They become obsessed with this notorious episode in
British history and the continuing resistance of the Chagossian people,
and feel urged to write in solidarity. But how to share a story that is
not theirs to tell?
Sad, funny and angry, this collaborative fiction builds on the true fact
of another: a collaborative fiction created by the British and US
governments to dispossess a people of their homeland.
