Where the Air Is Sweet is the title of Tasneem Jamal’s first novel. It is being published by the HarperCollins Canada. The publication date is May 2014. The on sale date (when you can buy it from booksellers) is June 3.
Here is a blurb about the novel taken from agency’s website:
In 1972, dictator Idi Amin expelled 80,000 South Asians from Uganda. Though many had lived in East Africa for generations, they were forced to flee in 90 days as their country descended into a surreal vortex of chaos and murder.
Spanning the years between 1921 and 1975, Where the Air Is Sweet tells the story of Raju, a young Indian man drawn to Africa by the human impulse to seek a better life, and three generations of his family who carve a life for themselves in a racially stratified colonial and post-colonial society. Where the Air Is Sweet is a story of family, their loves, their griefs, and finally their sudden expulsion at the hands of one of the world’s most terrifying tyrants.
In the writing of the novel, she has relied, in particular, on two excellent books for background of the Idi Amin years. General Amin by David Martin and A State of Blood by Henry Kyemba. Both books provide some great insight into the politics of the time.
More about this book at Tasneem Jamaml’s website http://tasneemjamal.ca/2013/12/15/where-the-air-is-sweet/
About Tasneem Jamal: Born in Mbarara, Uganda, in 1969, Tasneem Jamal immigrated to Canada with her family in 1975. She has worked as a journalist for over a decade as an editor at The Globe and Mail, Saturday Night Magazine and the National Post. She has written fiction and non-fiction for the Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad, The Globe and Mail, Saturday Night Magazine, the National Post and the Literary Review of Canada. She lives in Kitchener with her husband and two daughters
http://tasneemjamal.ca/2013/12/15/where-the-air-is-sweet/
http://www.cookeagency.ca/books/Jamal-T_Where-the-Air-Is-Sweet.htm
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