The poll has closed and, in a very close run race, this book is the winner. We've done a lot of male US writers recently, so the poll this month was mostly novels by non US and female writers. Thank you to the members who suggested books for the poll, and to the 13 members who voted. Please send us your suggestions for a book to read for the March Meetup.

The novel is available on Kindle and Kobo, and can also be downloaded from the Selexyz site. To order it, Amazon offers express delivery, but Waterstones may be cheaper. Of the bookshops in Amsterdam that sell English books it is at least available at the ABC and The English Bookshop (and the latter is cheaper). There is at least one copy in the city library. 

Also, a reminder that attendees are kindly asked for a $1 donation to go towards the administration costs charged by Meetup.com.

Looking forward to seeing you on the 28th!

About the book:

The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna

Freetown, Sierra Leone, 1969. On a hot January evening that he will remember for decades, Elias Cole first catches sight of Saffia Kamara, the wife of a charismatic colleague. He is transfixed. Thirty years later, lying in the capital's hospital, he recalls the desire that drove him to acts of betrayal he has tried to justify ever since. Elsewhere in the hospital, Kai, a gifted young surgeon, is desperately trying to forget the pain of a lost love that torments him as much as the mental scars he still bears from the civil war that has left an entire people with terrible secrets to keep. It falls to a British psychologist, Adrian Lockheart, to help the two survivors, but when he too falls in love, past and present collide with devastating consequences. The Memory of Love is a heartbreaking story of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

The Memory of Love won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book Award 2011; described by the judges as "a bold, deeply moving and accomplished novel" and Forna as "among the most talented writers in literature today". In the same year it was also longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Warwick Prize for Writing. More information about the book and the author is here.