Sweetness in the Belly

A richly imagined tale of one woman's search for love and belonging.

In Thatcher's London, Lilly, a white Muslim nurse, struggles in a state of invisible exile. As Ethiopian refugees gradually fill the flats of the housing estate where she lives, Lilly tentatively begins to share with them her longing for the home she herself once had in Africa and her heartbreaking search for her missing lover.

Back in Haile Selassie's Ethiopia, the young Lilly, born in the 1950s to British parents, now orphaned and full of religious conviction, finds herself living in the city of Harar. She is drawn to the idealistic young doctor, Aziz, himself an outsider in the community. But then convulsions of a new revolutionary order separate them, sending Lilly to an England she has never seen, while Aziz disappears.

Author: Camilla Gibb

Publisher: Vintage

Publication Date: 1 Feb. 2007

Paperback: 432 pages

ISBN-10: ‎0099499193

Dimensions: 12.9 x 2.6 x 19.8 cm