Sissie is leaving Africa for the first time, arriving in Europe on a scholarship to experience the glories of a Western education.
In Germany, as guest of honour over embassy cocktails, she cringes at her countrymen.
In a Bavarian castle, she is seduced by a lonely local mother to Little Adolf.
In freezing London, she witnesses ‘been-tos’ sharing myths of an overseas idyll.
In between continents, she writes a letter on the plane to her exiled former lover.
But it is not sent. She will tell these tales back at home.

Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo's brilliantly conceived prose poem is by turns bitter and gentle, and is a highly personal exploration of the conflicts between Africa and Europe, between men and women and between a complacent acceptance of the status quo and a passionate desire to reform a rotten world. Of her own writing, Ama Ata Aidoo says, "I write about people, about what strikes me and interests me. It seems the most natural thing in the world for women to write with women as central characters; making women the centre of my universe was spontaneous."

‘A treasure: one of the works that inspired my own literary journey.’ Tsitsi Dangarembga
‘Modest, lyrical, reflective and intelligent .. Deserves as wide an audience as it can get.’ Angela Carter