City of Stolen Magic - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nazneen Ahmed Pathak (Author)
Nazneen Ahmed Pathak is a British Bangladeshi writer, historian and visual artist who lives in the port city of Southampton. She spent most of her teen years in commuter belt suburbia writing, reading, and listening to melancholy indie music, going on to study English literature at the University of Warwick and completing a PhD in Bangladeshi literature at the University of Oxford. As a historian she researches the geography and history of migration, a subject which is also at the heart of much of her fiction, poetry and visual arts practice. She was selected as one of 12 mentees from 2000 applicants for the 2016/17 inaugural round of Penguin Random House's Write Now mentorship scheme which aims to support and publish underrepresented writers.

She has held residencies at Southampton Central Libraries, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton Museums and Archives, and the Francis Crick Institute in association with Poet in the City. She has been published in Poem: International English Language Quarterly, Places of Poetry: Mapping the Nation in Verse (OneWorld Publications), The Puffin Book of Big Dreams (Puffin), and A Match Made in Heaven: British Muslim Women Write About Love and Desire (Hope Road Press).

Nazneen's debut children's novel was City of Stolen Magic.

Sandhya Prabhat (Illustrator)
Sandhya Prabhat is an independent animator and illustrator from Chennai, working out of California, USA. Prabhat is an independent animator and illustrator from Chennai, working out of California, USA. She has illustrated children's books, as well as animating for TV and movies, and designing for social media platforms. Her clients include Penguin Random House India, HarperCollins India, Candlewick and Lantana Publishing.

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                    Prologue
 

Chompa wrinkled her nose as her mother ran the wooden
comb firmly through her ever-knotted mass of hair,
and dipped her toes into the river to distract herself. Ammi
teased at a particularly large knot, and Chompa let out a little
grumbling snort.
   ‘If you looked after it, Chompa, we would not have to do
this every morning.’
   But her hands became gentler while the comb and pins
hovered like hummingbirds.
   Eventually, Ammi rested her chin upon her daughter’s
head, and they gazed into the river at each other’s faces, one
propped on top of the other. The sounds of the jungle became
muted around them, and the water stilled, as if the world was
holding its breath. It was Chompa’s favourite moment of the
daily ritual.
   It wouldn’t last, of course. Soon everything would spring
back to busy life, and her hair would quickly follow. It was wild,
stubborn, and twice the thickness of any other girl’s hair in the
village. It was why, Chompa thought, the village children disliked
her so much.
That and the fact that she and her mother were witches.