Curandera
By Irenosen Okojie
Like her first novel, the 201 6 Betty Trask award winning Butterfly Fish, this is made up of two storylines in very different settings. Zulima narrates the first strand, set in 17th-century Cape Verde, where she appears as a mysterious stranger in the village of Gethsemane. She proves to be a hard worker, with a talent for healing, but her behaviour draws suspicion, and she is soon in trouble. The other narrative takes place in present-day London, where Therese, a scientist who is also an alternative healer, encounters three men, lonely strangers to the city, in whom she senses “the mark of kin”. She invites them to join her in a magical project. Their rituals awaken a genetic inheritance of shamanism, and they find, or create,…
