December 2024 Book Club - Black Butterfiles by Priscilla Morris

For our December book, we are reading Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris.

Sarajevo, spring 1992. Each night, nationalist gangs erect barricades, splitting the diverse city into ethnic enclaves; each morning, the residents – whether Muslim, Croat or Serb – push the makeshift barriers aside.

When violence finally spills over, Zora, an artist and teacher, sends her husband and elderly mother to safety with her daughter in England. Reluctant to believe that hostilities will last more than a handful of weeks, she stays behind while the city falls under siege. As the assault deepens and everything they love is laid to waste, black ashes floating over the rooftops, Zora and her friends are forced to rebuild themselves, over and over. Theirs is a breathtaking story of disintegration, resilience and hope.

Priscilla Morris is the daughter of a Yugoslav mother and a Cornish father. She grew up in London, spending summers in Sarajevo, and studied at Cambridge University and the University of East Anglia, where she gained her PhD in Creative Writing. Black Butterflies is her debut novel.
If you are coming to the Meet Up, we welcome recommendations for our next book. Come prepared to describe your choice. We like books of short to medium length that will not be too much of a challenge to read in the month or so allotted!

We also welcome anyone who wants to bring books along that they have finished with and are happy to pass on to other readers. However if there is no uptake on any of your books, please be prepared to take them home again as we have no storage facilities.

It is REALLY IMPORTANT that you please RSVP and CANCEL if your plans change as we have to manage the space we have booked at the venue. If RSVPs are closed, it means we have reached maximum numbers.