Aminatta Forna

Laura Scott (University of Glasgow)

Ed. by Gina Lyle, University of York
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Nicole Kennedy (University of Newcastle), Gina Lyle (University of York), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

Born 1964
Activity 2003-ongoing

Places

Born in Scotland
Active in United Kingdom; Sierra Leone

Cultural Identities

Black British

Activities

Primary

Novelist

Other

Memoirist

Resources

Forna's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Aminatta Forna was born 20th December 1965 in Bellshill, Lanarkshire, Scotland, the third child of Maureen Christison, a Scottish homemaker, and Dr. Mohamed Sorie Forna, a Sierra Leonean physician and politician. The first ten years of Forna’s life — which were to coincide with the last ten years of her father’s — are documented in her first published work,

The Devil that Danced on the Water: A Daughter’s Memoir

(2002). When Aminatta was six months old her parents moved with their family to Sierra Leone (

Devil

40-41), where Dr. Forna ran for election with the All People’s Congress (APC) while simultaneously running a doctor’s surgery out of the Forna compound (

Devil

71-74). After the APC’s victory in the elections of 1967, the defeated Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP),…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1777 words

Citation: Scott, Laura. "Aminatta Forna". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 February 2025 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=15062, accessed 31 March 2025.]