A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times
- 1 Dec 2022
- 9781838858919
- £14.99
- 224 pp
- 135×214mm
In a few words
A poignant and compelling collection of short stories about those whose lives have been marked by the risk of displacement, from the winner of the AKO Caine Prize
These stories capture lives caught between cultures and continents, past and present, truth and lies. As its displaced characters seek belonging, this collection explores the challenges of connection with empathy and nuance. A thrilling debut
Brit Bennett
Wonderful, wise stories [capturing] the experience of dislocation and loneliness
More about
the book
WINNER OF THE HURSTON/WRIGHT LEGACY AWARD FOR DEBUT FICTION
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM SAROYAN INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR WRITING 2024
FICTION FINALIST FOR THE WILLIAM SAROYAN INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR WRITING 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MUSEUM OF AFRICAN DIASPORA AFRICAN LITERARY AWARD 2023
FINALIST FOR THE PEN/ROBERT W. BINGHAM PRIZE FOR DEBUT SHORT STORY COLLECTION 2023
FINALIST FOR THE CHAUTAUQUA PRIZE 2023
LONGLISTED FOR THE STORY PRIZE 2023
‘Witty and wistful, complex and heartbreaking’ Brit Bennett
An enterprising young man on the verge of losing his home in Addis Ababa pursues an improbable opportunity to turn his life around. A woman visiting her country of origin for the first time finds that an ordinary object opens up an unexpected, complex bridge between worlds. An intergenerational friendship forms between two refugees living in Iowa who have connections to Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Kaleidoscopic, powerful and illuminative, the stories in A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times expand our understanding of the essential and universal need for connection and the vital refuge of home.
Shines with potent, affecting moments
A Down Home Meal for These Difficult Times held me spellbound, riveted to the compelling characters that walk through these pages, all of them guided by Meron’s revelatory and generous examinations of belonging and displacement
Maaza Mengiste
Brims with lives on the margins, collisions that do not fully happen, redemptions thwarted at the last minute . . . This style, which time and time again comes off the page as truly effortless, is what makes Hadero a new master of the form, and this collection a masterful one
Chigozie Obioma
A Down Home Meal For These Difficult Times is like a box of chocolates, with each story a meditation on identity, belonging, home and community. An Ethiopian-American writer with a global perspective, Hadero’s characters find themselves in-between, pulled by traditions while working to create new ties in adopted homelands. Her stories are mirrors that reflect back on her readers as they seek to understand and adapt to new paradigms, at work and in the world. Short and poignant, Hadero’s stories will linger—making even the briefest moment to read a powerful and sustaining experience
