Thirteen Months of Sunrise

Overview

A young woman sits by her father's deathbed, lamenting her failure to keep a promise to him… A struggling writer walks every inch of the city in search of inspiration, only to find it is much closer than she imagined… A girl collapses from hunger at the side of the road and is rescued by the most unlikely of saviours... In this powerful, debut collection, Rania Mamoun expertly blends the real and imagined to create a rich, complex and moving portrait of contemporary Sudan. From painful encounters with loved ones to unexpected new friendships, Mamoun illuminates the breadth of human experience and explores, with humour and compassion, the alienation, isolation and estrangement that is urban life. Translated from the Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette. "A stunning collection, remarkable for its sweet clarity of voice and startling depictions of the marginalised and the destitute. With mastery, Rania Mamoun reaches straight into the heartbeat of her subject matter, laying bare humanity in all its tenderness and tenacity." —Leila Aboulela, author of Elsewhere Home

Author Biography

Born in 1979, Rania Mamoun is a Sudanese author, journalist, and activist. She has published two novels in Arabic—Green Flash (2006) and Son of the Sun (2013)—as well as a short story collection Thirteen Months of Sunrise, which will be published in English by Comma Press in 2018. Her short stories have been published in various magazines and anthologies, including The Book of Khartoum (Comma Press, 2016), the first ever anthology of Sudanese short fiction in translation. She has also worked as culture page editor of Al-Thaqafi magazine, a columnist for Ad-Adwaa newspaper and presenter of the 'Silicon Valley' cultural programme on Sudanese TV.