Inspired
by true events, this gorgeous, haunting novel intertwines the lives
of two Black female artists more than a century apart, both outsiders
in Italy.
It was the middle of the nineteenth century when Lafanu Brown
audaciously decided to become an artist. In the wake of the American
Civil War, life was especially tough for Black women, but she didn’t
let that stop her. The daughter of a Native American woman and an
African-Haitian man, Lafanu had the rare opportunity to study,
travel, and follow her dreams, thanks to her indomitable spirit, but
not without facing intolerance and violence. Now, in 1887, living in
Rome as one of the city’s most established painters, she is ready
to tell her fiancé about her difficult life, which began in a poor
family forty years earlier.
In 2019, an Italian art curator of Somali origin is desperately
trying to bring to Europe her younger cousin, who is only sixteen and
has already tried to reach Italy on a long, treacherous journey.
While organizing an art exhibition that will combine the paintings of
Lafanu Brown with the artworks of young migrants, the curator becomes
more and more obsessed with the life and secrets of the
nineteenth-century painter.
Weaving together these two vibrant voices, Igiaba Scego has
crafted a powerful exploration of what it means to be “other,” to
be a woman, and particularly a Black woman, in a foreign country,
yesterday and today.