On happiness

Forna, A (2019) 'On happiness.' Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Enquiry, 6 (3). pp. 418-422. ISSN 2052-2614

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Abstract

The publication of Happiness in 2019 marked a near twenty-year immersion in narratives that dealt with notions of war and trauma, an inquiry that began with a memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water (2002), written at the time of the civil conflict in Sierra Leone, and continuing through four novels, culminating in Happiness. In The Memory of Love and through the character of British psychologist Adrian Lockheart, a trauma specialist who arrives in Sierra Leone in the wake of the conflict, I engaged most directly with conceptual notions of trauma. It is in this novel that Attila Asare, a Ghanaian psychiatrist who runs a mental health facility in postwar Sierra Leone, makes his first appearance. Some years later, following publication of the Croatian-set novel The Hired Man, I found myself compelled to return to the character of Asare and the subject of trauma in my most recent novel, Happiness.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Happiness, resilience, Aminatta Forna, war, trauma
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Divisions:	School of Writing, Publishing and the Humanities
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1017/pli.2019.18
Date Deposited:	03 Dec 2019 13:27
Last Modified:	06 Jan 2022 19:42
URI / Page ID:	https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/12793

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