"This is not a book to be hurried. It repays slow, careful reading, and your copy may, like mine, end up with underlinings and scribbles highlighting juicy phrases, such as the Spanish books Aaron can't read, their 'faded titles sneering quietly'.

Its wisdom, too, is subtle. When Amy asks some school-friends why, if their original homeland is so great, they aren't still living there, she misses the point. Without our past, Oyeyemi shows, we are nothing - and that way madness lies."