REBECCA WALKER / Ade: A Love Story

 

 

Known for her brilliant, frank memoirs, Rebecca Walker returns with a poetic, lushly written debut exploring the themes of memory, longing, passion, and loss, Walker gives us the story of two lovers in a volatile world where time and place mean everything.

ADÉ tells the story of a free-spirited American woman and a Swahili Muslim man who fall in love on the exquisite island of Lamu, off the coast of Kenya. There, they create their own paradise: living in a traditional small white house and creating their private language of intimacy. After an intense courtship, Adé asks for Farida’s hand in marriage.

But when Adé and Farida are forced to leave the island in preparation for their wedding, Farida is faced by the unsettling and often violent realities of life on the mainland. And just as the Persian Gulf War begins, Farida succumbs to a disease that almost kills her, and alters her relationship with Adé forever.

A transcendent love story turned tale of survival, ADÉ explores what happens when one couple’s private idyll is interrupted by a world in the throes of massive upheaval.  

 

 

 

 

 

Rebecca Walker is the author of the best-selling memoirs Black, White and Jewish and Baby Love, and editor of the anthology Black Cool. She is also the editor of the anthologies To Be Real, What Makes a Man, and One Big Happy Family. Her writing has appeared in Bookforum, Newsweek, Glamour, Marie Claire, The Washington Post, Vibe, and Interview, among many other publications, and she blogs regularly for The Root. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccawalker.