“He knows nothing about how this will all end, except that it will surely end. He tries to imagine himself into a future, somewhere past this point, but he cannot. There is nothing to do but to keep on existing, in this exact time and place. This is what hell must be like. Waiting without knowing. Not hell, but purgatory. Worse than hell.”
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Aminatta Forna is a British author of Sierra Leonean origin, renowned for her fiction and non-fiction works that explore themes of identity, memory, and the African diaspora. Born in 1964, she has penned several novels and essays that reflect her own experiences as a woman of African descent living in the UK. more
“You don't deserve to understand truth if all that you want is just the normal life.”
“Every time you hear a car alarm, Ruby said, another New Yorker has gone to hell.”
“Pape Satan, Pape Satan, Aleppe!”
“There’s an idea that hell is other people. My idea is that it might be repetition.”
“Hell didn't make me a monster. It just confirmed all my worst fears about myself.”