Mourning
Karen Williams
Nov 2026 · Sold by Simon and Schuster
Ebook
150
Pages
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infoThis book will become available on November 3, 2026. You will not be charged until it is released.
About this ebook
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“In Cairo she had lost a husband; in Freetown she discovered she had stepped into a landscape where everyone was missing someone.” Mourning is a literary novel by Karen Williams set in the 1991s, moving between Cairo, Freetown, Sarajevo, Kailahun, rural Sierra Leone, and exile in Conakry. After Daniel, a journalist and war photographer, is killed in Cairo, his wife Marie travels to Freetown, where he once worked during Sierra Leone’s civil war. In a city of amputee camps, child soldiers, ruined buildings, and crowded beach bars full of peacekeepers and aid workers, she carries his camera and a small shrine from place to place, guided by Hassan, Daniel’s friend and fixer, who has his own history of escape and the loss of his brother. As Marie volunteers at an amputee camp, she realises she is being watched by a former child soldier whose gaze follows her across the city. When she chases him into a derelict building, she finds him hiding with Daniel’s black notebooks—field notes from massacres, an eight-year-old commander called “General Killquick,” and stories from Kailahun and Sarajevo. Through Daniel’s notebooks and figures like Hassan and J-Com, a young man with war-damaged memory, Marie comes to see that her private grief is one strand in a larger web of violence, survival, and relationships—between husbands and wives, brothers, co-workers, and strangers bound by a single photograph or decision. Through shifting perspectives and locations, Mourning offers a close look at war reporting through local fixers and foreign correspondents, vivid depictions of postwar Freetown, and an examination of memory, complicity, and survivor’s guilt among journalists, survivors, and those left behind. Readers will find the story of a young widow leaving Cairo for war-scarred Freetown after her husband’s killing; close, ground-level views of war reporting in Sarajevo and Sierra Leone; depictions of amputee camps, child soldiers, and postwar city life in Freetown; interlinked narratives set in Cairo, Sarajevo, Kailahun, Freetown, and exile in Conakry; and a sustained exploration of grief, memory, complicity, and survivor’s guilt among those who witness violence and those who live with its aftermath.
“In Cairo she had lost a husband; in Freetown she discovered she had stepped into a landscape where everyone was missing someone.” Mourning is a literary novel by Karen Williams set in the 1991s, moving between Cairo, Freetown, Sarajevo, Kailahun, rural Sierra Leone, and exile in Conakry. After Daniel, a journalist and war photographer, is killed in Cairo, his wife Marie travels to Freetown, where he once worked during Sierra Leone’s civil war. In a city of amputee camps, child soldiers, ruined buildings, and crowded beach bars full of peacekeepers and aid workers, she carries his camera and a small shrine from place to place, guided by Hassan, Daniel’s friend and fixer, who has his own history of escape and the loss of his brother. As Marie volunteers at an amputee camp, she realises she is being watched by a former child soldier whose gaze follows her across the city. When she chases him into a derelict building, she finds him hiding with Daniel’s black notebooks—field notes from massacres, an eight-year-old commander called “General Killquick,” and stories from Kailahun and Sarajevo. Through Daniel’s notebooks and figures like Hassan and J-Com, a young man with war-damaged memory, Marie comes to see that her private grief is one strand in a larger web of violence, survival, and relationships—between husbands and wives, brothers, co-workers, and strangers bound by a single photograph or decision. Through shifting perspectives and locations, Mourning offers a close look at war reporting through local fixers and foreign correspondents, vivid depictions of postwar Freetown, and an examination of memory, complicity, and survivor’s guilt among journalists, survivors, and those left behind. Readers will find the story of a young widow leaving Cairo for war-scarred Freetown after her husband’s killing; close, ground-level views of war reporting in Sarajevo and Sierra Leone; depictions of amputee camps, child soldiers, and postwar city life in Freetown; interlinked narratives set in Cairo, Sarajevo, Kailahun, Freetown, and exile in Conakry; and a sustained exploration of grief, memory, complicity, and survivor’s guilt among those who witness violence and those who live with its aftermath.
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“In Cairo she had lost a husband; in Freetown she discovered she had stepped into a landscape where everyone was missing someone.” Mourning is a literary novel by Karen Williams set in the 1991s, moving between Cairo, Freetown, Sarajevo, Kailahun, rural Sierra Leone, and exile in Conakry. Afte...
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About the author
Karen Williams is a South African journalist who has worked in conflict zones in Africa and Asia. She was a longtime contributor to the Media Diversified (MD) website and is currently researching Indian Ocean slavery between Africa and Asia.
Her fiction, academic work, and journalism have been published in South Africa, Britain, and the United States, including in Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire; At the Rendezvous of Victory (anthology) edited by Andries Oliphant; The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction (anthology) edited by Naomi Holoch and Joan Nestle; The Invisible Ghetto (anthology) edited by Matthew Krouse; Sinister Wisdom; and Common Lives/Lesbian Lives.
She has lived and worked around the world and has been a frequent media commentator on issues of war, gender, women’s rights, and justice.
Her fiction, academic work, and journalism have been published in South Africa, Britain, and the United States, including in Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire; At the Rendezvous of Victory (anthology) edited by Andries Oliphant; The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction (anthology) edited by Naomi Holoch and Joan Nestle; The Invisible Ghetto (anthology) edited by Matthew Krouse; Sinister Wisdom; and Common Lives/Lesbian Lives.
She has lived and worked around the world and has been a frequent media commentator on issues of war, gender, women’s rights, and justice.
Karen Williams is a South African journalist who has worked in conflict zones in Africa and Asia. She was a longtime contributor to the Media Diversified (MD) website and is currently researching Indian Ocean slavery between Africa and Asia.
Her fiction, academic work, and journalism have been p...
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