This book brings the slave trade, anthropology, and psychology together in a rewarding partnership. Through a creative mix of facts and fiction it crosses not only physical boundaries - Africa and the Caribbean, North Africa, and the Sahara Desert.

Jacques, a young and courageous surgeon, also tests boundaries "in general". Therefore, his narrative feels very contemporary and of relevance to us all.

When the slave ship Les Trois Amis founders at sea and Amina, one of the enslaved Africans, regains her freedom and "lost humanity", all of us gain too. Amina's freedom also sets us free, extending our capacity for empathy of others and starting all over when our world falls apart.

Amina teaches us how to go on living in a heartless world. This is an intriguing novel.

It is unusual in its content, topical in its concerns, and written with great energy and wide background knowledge. It takes us into the dream world between reality and fiction and explores some of the most painful aspects of the history of the slave trade.

It widens our understanding of the past and the present. " Professor Alan Macfarlane, F.

B. A.

Emeritus Professor of Anthropological Science, Cambridge University. .