“A truly global thinker of rare and beautiful gifts, Anna Badkhen takes us on a journey to the interior of the lyric moment: that space where understanding flashes at us, and we realize we are at home on this planet; despite all our maladies, despite our “moral dislocation,” we still have as our home “a memory of our presence, a memory of our absence.” This is a beautiful book.”

“Badkhen has spent her career documenting inequities around the world.... In her acrobatic seventh collection, longlisted for the National Book Award, she lasers her attention on the global turmoil that has expelled one in seven people from their homelands....What grounds us in this daring work is Badkhen’s incandescent poetics, an augury all its own.”

“Via a series of ethereal scholarly essays, the author aims to find a better way to see and understand grief, especially as embodied in the world’s migrant crisis. Badkhen recounts her travels around the globe and bolsters her experiences with a dizzying wealth of literary and artistic touchstones. Hazily poetic, she constructs her essays like a collagist, in search of the untapped resonance that can be channeled when seemingly incongruous ideas are placed in proximity. . . . A soulful, ambitious quest for a path through centuries of loss and displacement.”

“A work of quiet genius. Badkhen has an uncanny ability to address some of the most complex of modern human problems — food shortages, human ambition, family relations—while, at the same time, conveying the spiritual awareness and binding allegiance and love that characterize an enduring community of fishing families on the coast of Senegal. Her keenly observed descriptions of the sea are startling and gorgeous, and her patient consideration of what matters most in human life is unexpectedly hopeful.”

“A profound account of a single community—its primary industries, religious beliefs, and rhythms….[it] unfolds like a novel, featuring well-drawn and sympathetic characters, and show[s] how thoroughly the implications of environmental disaster seep into everyday life.”

“A careful rendering of one of the world’s last remaining migratory peoples… [Badkhen] uses her credentials as a war reporter with tact, reconditioning readers whose only context for West Africa — and perhaps the continent — is that of violence… She situates the Fulani in relief across centuries and physical space… [and] her richly detailed and delivered observations are crafted with a careful ear for the rhythms of language.”

“Intrepid… Season by season, rite by rite, encounter by encounter, thread by illuminating thread, Badkhen weaves a glorious prose carpet that poignantly captures the surface and the soul of life in Oqa, and in all the Oqas that grace the loom of Afghanistan.”