We cannot change the past, she thought. How we long to sometimes, trying to work out how horror might have been averted by a fluke of fortune, a kind intercession, wisdom not yet granted.

Her task seemed ridiculous, the result of a momentary weakness, of believing in the impossible, that stories have a trajectory where we find things out, resolve things to our satisfaction and come out the other...

For the rest of my life, Zanzibar will be the Swahili word for rain. The rain would drizzle, spit, mist, downpour, shower, torrent, gust, deluge and blast. At one point it hit the ground so...