Reading right now...

I've only just started this novel, just two chapters in, actually, and I'm hooked. I mean, hooked in the gut. This writing is powerful, unsentimental, unflinching. I'd like to write like that, but I'm too squeamish. Apart from the compelling writing, I'm partial to exotic settings. Here's the premise, right off the back cover:

"Set in Emperor Haile Selassie's Ethiopia and the racially charged world of Thatcher's London, Sweetness in the Belly is a richly detailed portrayal of one woman's search for love and belonging. Lilly, born to British parents, eventually finds herself living as a devout, young, white Muslim woman in the ancient walled city of Harar in the years leading up to the deposition of the emperor. She is drawn to an idealistic young doctor, Aziz, but their love has only just begun to fulfil its promise when the convulsions of a new order wrench them apart, sending Lilly to an England she has never seen, and Aziz into the darkness of a radical revolution..."

The novel by Canadian Camilla Gibb is a National Bestseller and Giller Prize finalist.