The Witch Doctor's Daughter
- Description
- Praise
- About the Author
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Longlisted for the 2021 Epigram Books Fiction Prize
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Safiyya loves her charlatan parents, but after years of watching the heartbroken and grieving come to them for fake and futile spiritual aid, she has had enough. So she leaves the Water Village to stay with her mother's people at the longhouse in the jungle, where she learns traditional medicine, meets an enigmatic linguist and finds herself caring for an orphaned newborn. Along the way, Safiyya must discover what she truly wants from life. -
“A deeply moving tale of female self-discovery, and also a Brunei that I never knew existed—a society in the 90s shaped by relative poverty, animist tradition, religious flexibility, the wilderness of the jungles, the freedom of the waters and, above all, the strange and not-completely-untraumatic process of blossoming into a modern, developed nation.”
–Ng Yi-Sheng, multi-award-winning author of Lion City
“I couldn’t put down Kathrina Mohd Daud’s beautiful, exuberant coming-of-age tale. Safiyya is a heroine for all of us: unruly, brilliant and absorbing as she grapples with indigenous beliefs and modern knowledge, going between the jungle and the Water Village. I was riveted.”
–Sunisa Manning, author of A Good True Thai -
Kathrina Mohd Daud lives and writes in Brunei Darussalam. She is the author of The Fisherman King (finalist for the 2020 Epigram Books Fiction Prize) and The Halfling King (2017). She holds a PhD in Writing from the University of Manchester (2011), and is currently an Assistant Professor in Universiti Brunei Darussalam’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
Cover Type: Paperback
Page Count: 208
Year Published: 2022
Size: 225mm x 152mm