Harare Review of Books

400 pages.

Expected publication date: Jan 31, 2023 (HarperCollins)

Genre: Fiction/African Literature.

Bisi Adjapon has written a very engaging novel of family, home, migration—in other words, belonging, friendship, and coming of age, in Daughter in Exile.

Lola is young and carefree, and thriving in the expat community of the Dakar of the mid-1990s. She has left her mother and sister in Ghana, and isn’t looking back. Unexpectedly, she meets and falls in love with a marine who is stationed at the US embassy, and he persuades her to move to the US to be with him. Naively, she does so without him, and winds up in New York, pregnant and alone. What follows is the story of her precarity, exploitation, and survival against the worst odds.

Some small criticisms: Lola’s arc is almost implausible—everything that can go wrong, does. There are far too many characters to keep track of, so my suggestion is to just keep your eyes on Lola. Content warnings (which are spoilers) for sexual assault, and death by suicide. There is also—surprisingly, I thought—a great deal of Christian content which comes across as slightly preachy.

However, I found myself engrossed, and anxiously praying Lola would come through (—I would fight Bisi for putting her through so much). This is a wonderful novel, and a great addition to African literature. Highly recommended.

Thank you to Edelweiss and to HarperCollins for this ARC.