# The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion - Hardcover

by **Aminatta Forna** (Author)

**A stunning new collection of essays from the award-winning author of _Happiness_, _The Window Seat_ explores border crossings both literal and philosophical, our relationship with the natural world, and the stories that we tell ourselves.**

Aminatta Forna is one of our most important literary voices, and her novels have won the Windham Campbell Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book. In this elegantly rendered and wide-ranging collection of new and previously published essays, Forna writes intimately about displacement, trauma and memory, love, and how we coexist and encroach on the non-human world.

Movement is a constant here. In the title piece, "The Window Seat," she reveals the unexpected enchantments of commercial air travel. In "Obama and the Renaissance Generation," she documents how, despite the narrative of Obama's exceptionalism, his father, like her own, was one of a generation of gifted young Africans who came to the United Kingdom and the United States for education and were expected to build their home countries anew after colonialism. In "The Last Vet," time spent shadowing Dr. Jalloh, the only veterinarian in Sierra Leone, as he works with the street dogs of Freetown, becomes a meditation on what a society's treatment of animals tells us about its principles. In "Crossroads," she examines race in America from an African perspective, and in "Power Walking" she describes what it means to walk in the world in a Black woman's body and in "The Watch" she explores the raptures of sleep and sleeplessness the world over.

Deeply meditative and written with a wry humor, _The Window Seat_ confirms that Forna is a vital voice in international letters.

### Author Biography

**AMINATTA FORNA** is also the author of the novels _Happiness_, _Ancestor Stones_, _The Memory of Love_, and _The Hired Man_, as well as the memoir _The Devil That Danced on the Water_. Forna's books have been translated into sixteen languages. Her essays have appeared in _Granta_, _The Guardian_, _The Observer_, and _Vogue_. She is currently Director and Lannan Foundation Chair of Poetics at Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice at Georgetown University.

**Number of Pages:** 272

**Dimensions:** 1.1 x 8.3 x 5.5 IN

**Illustrated:** Yes

**Publication Date:** May 18, 2021

## Details

- **Price:** 26.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 26.00 USD | In stock |

## Images

- The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion - Hardcover

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