Amrita Chakraborty

A Dusky Dawn Amrita Chakraborty

"Nigeria! Why?" Chhobi's world is turned upside down when her husband has to suddenly move to what she had heard as the "crime, strife and disease-ridden dystopia" of West Africa. What she finds when she gets there challenges her in more ways than she ever imagined. From coquettish, vivacious maids to kidnappers who weren't bereft of all humaneness, she finds a land where the hardships of everyday life can scarcely hide an indomitably exuberant human spirit.

In Dusky Dawn, Amrita paints a beautiful picture of modern urban Nigerian society through the eyes of an expat, describing her journey from one of ignorant despair to grateful and beholden to Nigerians. Her stories, albeit fictionalized, draw inspiration from the everyday realities of Nigerian life--the ubiquitousness of the chaos and clutter in the fastest-growing large economy of the African continent and surviving and triumphing in the midst of it. It is a book about how joy, laughter, and happiness are so easily found in places where it would seem impossible to those uninformed of the Nigerian character. It speaks of a land where the beautiful dawn can, at any moment, turn dark by the terror of gunfire; but where also, in the darkest hour of night, hostages may find compassion in "dreaded" kidnappers.