Press and media
Press and media
Descriptions, biography and lines from the novel, ready to copy into a review, a listing or a feature. Nothing here gives away how the vote turns out or how the book ends.
The book at a glance
| Title | Songs of Dust and Water |
|---|---|
| Author | M.J. Hydara |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
| Length | About 60,000 words; 252 pages in paperback |
| Editions | Paperback (ISBN 9798162251088), hardcover (ISBN 9798162534938), Kindle ebook |
| Setting | Two fictional West African republics, over twenty-five years |
Descriptions
Taglines
- Who holds the key, who pays, and who decides.
- A well gone bitter. A village that learns to keep what it builds.
- Two villages, ten years apart, and the question of who owns the water.
Logline
When a foreign-funded plant burns in one village, the engineer behind it comes, ten years later, to another, where three women who keep the well, the accounts and the savings must decide who will own what they build.
Short description
Ten years after a foreign-funded plant burns in the north, a village on a dying floodplain tries again, this time on its own terms. Songs of Dust and Water follows the women who keep the well, the accounts and the savings as they bring in water, build a road and write rules that hold, and then face an offer that could buy it all.
Back-cover copy
In Madina, in the dry north, a weaver's son is taken on at a plant of glass and steel that promises light, water and a future. When it burns, it takes his hope with it.
Ten years later and six hundred kilometres south, the well at Nafawol has gone bitter. A foreign engineer arrives with money and a debt he does not name. Kadiatou, who keeps the well, does not trust him. Fatou, who keeps the accounts, trusts only what is written down. Isatou, who keeps the women's savings, wants to know into whose hand the money goes.
Together they bring in water, build a road and a mill, and write rules that hold. Then a company offers to buy everything they have made, and the vote that follows divides the people who built it.
Songs of Dust and Water is a story of who holds the key, who pays, and what a village owes the ones who come after.
The author
Short biography
M.J. Hydara holds a degree in philosophy and lives in the United Kingdom, having lived in Sierra Leone, The Gambia and Senegal.
Longer biography
M.J. Hydara holds a degree in philosophy and lives in the United Kingdom. Before that, home was Sierra Leone, The Gambia and Senegal. Songs of Dust and Water draws on those years in West Africa: on its villages and markets, its councils of elders, its festivals and its long memory of the empires that came before.
Lines from the novel
None of these gives away the plot.
Malik, Part One
“A thing you are not allowed to mend is not yours”
Malik, Part One · p. 16
Kadiatou, Part Two
“Words are wind, Tubab”
Kadiatou, Part Two · p. 91
Adam, Part Two
“I was an engineer. Now I carry the money, and I answer for how it is spent.”
Adam, Part Two · p. 90
Mamadou, Part Two
“Then build it so that it does not need me to be honest”
Mamadou, Part Two · p. 128
Kadiatou, Part Two
“A rope of four strands is not four ropes.”
Kadiatou, Part Two · p. 165
For permissions and press enquiries:
