Open My Eyes, That I May See Marvellous Things
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: when adopted midwife Mariam embarks on a project to protect an abandoned premature baby, she is forced to face her own abandonment years before. Time is running out before the baby is sent to the orphanage. Mysterious characters from the city surrounding the hospital will be crucial in determining the baby’s fate, as will a workaholic British doctor with whom Mariam finds herself falling in love... Alice Allan's debut novel is an original, vivid and moving story about attachment and loss.
Alice Allan grew up in rural Devon then English at Cambridge University. She worked as an actress and a corporate trainer in London and Tokyo, then as a lactation consultant in public hospitals in Addis Ababa, where she taught about breastfeeding, skin-to-skin and kangaroo care for premature babies. She has contributed articles on mothering and breastfeeding to various publications including Breastfeeding Today, Midwives and The Mother Magazine. She currently lives in Tashkent, Uzbekistan with her diplomat husband, two daughters and a large Ethiopian street dog called Frank. Open My Eyes is her first novel.