Thirty Girls

Thirty Girls
Susan Minot

Esther is a Ugandan teenager abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army and forced to witness and commit unspeakable atrocities on behalf of their leader, the despicable Joseph Kony. Her life becomes a constant struggle to survive, to escape, to find a way to live with what she has seen and done. Jane is an American journalist who has travelled to Africa, hoping to give a voice to children like Esther and to find her centre after a series of failed relationships. In unflinching prose, Minot interweaves their stories, giving us razor-sharp portraits of two extraordinary young women confronting displacement, heartbreak, and the struggle to wrest meaning from events that test them both in unimaginable ways.With mesmerising emotional intensity and stunning evocations of Africa's beauty and its horror, Minot gives us her most brilliant and ambitious novel yet.

Thirty Girls

Susan Minot

Copyright (#ulink_2202da55-5600-54d8-8f6d-51adf59bbd77)

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

www.4thestate.co.uk (http://www.4thestate.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2014

First published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada

Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House Companies

A portion of this work originally appeared in different form

in Granta (winter 2012)

Copyright © 2014 by Susan Minot

Design by Kate Gaughran. Cover photographs © Claudia Dewald/Getty Images

Susan Minot asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780007550722

Ebook Edition © February 2014 ISBN: 9780007568901

Version: 2015-01-30

To beloved daughters Ava Cecily Hannah

and the brave daughters of Uganda

Contents

Cover (#u9c6f913b-e389-54f4-bf0b-a7b7a2f9cfb4)

Title Page (#u2ecb438b-427d-5176-8519-a093f6eca1f0)

Copyright (#ubd3f654d-38ae-5ccb-9544-72adb2f9e0f0)

Dedication (#u76edc0b2-6b76-5953-95bf-1aa23b1417a2)

I: THEY TOOK ALL OF US (#u14a98450-0564-5a93-865f-01a9d8da28fc)

1. Thirty Girls (#u2aa1c2d9-ed05-5c9a-b5b0-b21b84c9dad0)

II: LAUNCH (#u4a5bdf30-1763-5ca7-9858-2da4ff5a23e3)

2. Landing (#u071201bd-f96f-50cf-ad03-e25e2a58b36c)

3. Esther (#uaaa8086b-6444-52e0-88e6-90ea948890d8)

4. Taking Off (#u30ab501b-bd04-53a1-80b6-948091fdb029)

III: FIRST DAYS (#litres_trial_promo)

5. The You File (#litres_trial_promo)

6. Recreational Visits (#litres_trial_promo)

7. Independence Day (#litres_trial_promo)

IV: TO THE NORTH (#litres_trial_promo)

8. On Location (#litres_trial_promo)

9. In the Bush (#litres_trial_promo)

V: IT IS POSSIBLE (#litres_trial_promo)

10. At St. Mary’s (#litres_trial_promo)

11. Was God in Sudan? (#litres_trial_promo)

VI: REFUGE (#litres_trial_promo)

12. Hospitality in Lacor (#litres_trial_promo)

13. The You File (#litres_trial_promo)