I've fallen hard for memoirs this year, which I have to admit I didn't see coming.
Samatar has always been a gloriously gifted writer of travel stories, although it is a bit odd to have her writing about real places this time.
She thinks about so many things that I find deeply interesting and, in particular, the way she talks about Mennonite culture and ethnicity and religion is (as she notes) incredibly resonant Judaism. The way she weaves stories together with meditations on how people(s) carry history and the unnoticed or deliberately ignored voices in histories and societies. The tension in Samatar's identities animates the story and allows space for all of the multiplicity of things that come together to make this mosaic of a memoir.
It was beautiful.