Sweetness in the Belly

Last night everyone else in the house was asleep by 9:30, so I had over two hours of uninterrupted reading time. I finished Camilla Gibb's gorgeous novel Sweetness in the Belly, about a young British woman, raised as a Muslim, in 1970s Ethiopia. The prose is beautiful, the story heartbreaking and illuminating - a wonderful work of multicultural fiction. It also presents a compassionate view of Islam, which seems to be missing in the press these days.

It didn't make me want to go to Ethiopia, but it did make me dig up my recipe for doro wat, which I'm going to make for lunch. That's one way of prolonging my stay in the world of Gibb's book.