Ana, a 62-year-old designer from Slovenia, begins a relationship with Ismael, a much younger man from Burkina Faso.

What could easily become a neat novel of forbidden romance instead turns stranger, harder and more politically charged: a story of bodies, race, age, loneliness, projection and the difficulty we face of properly crossing into another person’s world.

Set between Europe and West Africa, Dry Season moves through desire, memory, childhood trauma and the dry Harmattan wind, where neither love nor landscape offers much relief. Gabriela Babnik’s novel won the European Union Prize for Literature and was translated from Slovene by Rawley Grau. 

First English-language edition, published by Istros Books in 2015. Paperback in very good condition, with light shelf wear to cover edges and corners.