Thirteen Months of Sunrise

A young woman sits by her father’s deathbed, lamenting her failure to keep a promise to him…

A struggling writer walks every inch of the city in search of inspiration, only to find it is much closer than she imagined…

A girl collapses from hunger at the side of the road and is rescued by the most unlikely of saviours...

In this powerful, debut collection of stories, Rania Mamoun expertly blends the real and imagined to create a rich, complex and moving portrait of contemporary Sudan. From painful encounters with loved ones to unexpected new friendships, Mamoun illuminates the breadth of human experience and explores, with humour and compassion, the alienation, isolation and estrangement that is urban life.

One of World Literature Today's 75 Notable Translations of 2019.

One of The Guardian's 'Top 10 books about Sudan'

One of Bustle's '25 New Short Story Collections To Read This Summer'

One of Bookshy Book's 'Ten-Plus Short Story Collections from Writers of African Origin'

One of African Argument's 'The best books by African writers in 2019 so far...'

One of The National's translated works by women for Women in Translation Month.

'It is a phenomental, exacting collection. It's intense and intimate, and always bordering, with absolute control, on the subversive and erotic. It's also very funny - Rania Mamoun is an extraordinary talent.'- Preti Taneja, author of We That Are Young

‘A stunning collection, remarkable for its sweet clarity of voice and startling depictions of the marginalised and the destitute. With mastery, Rania Mamoun reaches straight into the heartbeat of her subject matter, laying bare humanity in all its tenderness and tenacity.’ – Leila Aboulela, author of Elsewhere Home

'Mamoun’s writing is very careful... Perhaps hers is a care that becomes second nature when living under the threat of government censorship, intimidation and the limits on press freedom that exist in Sudan.' - The Johannesburg Review of Books

'Mamoun writes with a sparse clarity, eschewing melodrama: if her narrator here lives a lifetime in a moment, so Mamoun herself writes a life in just a few pages... and offers a rich fresco of life that is at once deeply embedded in her culture and universally recognisable.' - Translating Women

'Thirteen Months of Sunrise will have you witnessing everything from fleeting love, bonded by shared knowledge and culture, to death and those things left unsaid. Like these stories, life, and that of those around you, is fleeting and must be cherished.' - Books and Bao

'Thirteen Months of Sunrise invites the reader to luxuriate; to immerse themselves in a plethora of emotions, whetting the appetite for more of Mamoun’s writing, and to learn about modern day Sudan at such a crucial stage in its history.' - The Culture Vulture