Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create accountGet a free audiobook when you make the switch!
When you start a new membership in support of local bookstores with the promo code SWITCH, youโll get a bonus audiobook credit at sign-up.
Make the switchGift audiobook credit bundles
You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.
Start giftingHappiness
Summary
From award-winning writer Aminatta Forna, a stunning novel bringing an American scientist and a Ghanaian psychologist together in London in a hunt for a missing boy-and an expansive, subtle tale of loss, hope, love, compassion, culture, and the true meaning of happiness. "Not since Remains of the Day has an author so skillfully revealed the way history's layers are often invisible to all but its participants . . . Gorgeous."-John Freeman, Boston Globe on The Hired Man. London. A fox makes its way across Waterloo Bridge. The distraction causes two pedestrians to collide-Jean, an American studying the habits of urban foxes, and Attila, a Ghanaian psychiatrist there to deliver a keynote speech. From this chance encounter, Aminatta Forna's unerring powers of observation show how in the midst of the rush of a great city lie numerous moments of connection. Attila has arrived in London with two tasks: to deliver a keynote speech on trauma, as he has done many times before; and to contact the daughter of friends, his "niece" who hasn't called home in a while. Ama has been swept up in an immigration crackdown, and now her young son Tano is missing. When, by chance, Attila runs into Jean again, she mobilizes the network of rubbish men she uses as volunteer fox spotters. Security guards, hotel doormen, traffic wardens-mainly West African immigrants who work the myriad streets of London-come together to help. As the search for Tano continues, a deepening friendship between Attila and Jean unfolds. Meanwhile a consulting case causes Attila to question the impact of his own ideas on trauma, the values of the society he finds himself in, and a grief of his own. In this delicate tale of love and loss, of cruelty and kindness, Forna asks us to consider the interconnectedness of lives, our co-existence with one another and all living creatures, and the true nature of happiness.