How do you tell the story of a family when the common language has been lost in the diaspora? When memories are deceptive and beloved relatives have been scattered around the world for generations? In her acclaimed autofictional novel, the great Italian storyteller Igiaba Scego goes in search of traces between Mogadishu and Rome. She tells of mothers who were thought lost and brothers who were found again, of a childhood spent in the bush and going to school in the north of Rome, of the wounds of colonial history that are carried down through the generations – and of the great hope that lies in storytelling.