“[A] fascinating novel”
“Baraka Sakin’s masterful tragicomic work…reads like a weighing-scale in which different—and often competing—logics of justice and freedom are tested. Sometimes, they take the shape of revenge.”
— Alex Tan, Words Without Borders
“While Samahani — Swahili for ‘forgive me’ — depicts enslavers’ great depravity and brutality, Baraka Sakin’s signature satirical voice wryly lightens the unbearable. The tone is of a sardonic knowing, deadpan as it describes intimate daily humiliations.”
“With his brilliant storytelling that compels the reader from the first page, unable to predict the protagonists’ fate until the very last page, Sakin has done his part in forging a path towards sincere conversations and reparations by shedding light on lives and experiences that history has not taken into account.”