would recommend if you enjoy Kindred. The plot was sometimes a little challenging to follow but was otherwise a really unique book. would give a 3.5

I was drawn to this book by the front cover and it didn't disappont. It is well written with a compelling storyline and well developed characters that I loved. I really enjoyed it.

Inventive, but needs time to get one’s bearings. Not convinced that the trials of the contemporary Ada are as significant as those of the historical Adas. Full review at https://lizzysiddal2.wordpress.com/2023/04/13/adas-realm-sharon-dodua-otoo/.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC ebook in exchange for an honest review.

While I liked the idea and the choice of having 4 different time periods, the narrative was too confusing for me

This book wasn´t easy to read, but I nonetheless finished it in a short time. The non-linear story deals with four women called Ada, from a woman in a village at the West coast of Africa in 1459 who once again looses a child and is confronted with the Portuguese colonialists, a version of Ada Lovelace in Victorian London, a Polish woman who has to work in a Nazi concentration camp brothel to a pregnant 2019 woman from Ghana moving to Berlin and looking for a place to live. All these stories are mixed with eachother and in the second half told from the perspective of several objects like a passport or a broom. Though the story seems a bit forced at times, it was a fascinating read for me. As it is originally written in my native German, I had a look into the original too. Recommendation.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC ebook in exchange for an honest review.

Ada is one and a lot more women involved in giving birth, inventing computer languages and many other things.
It's an original story, there's plenty of food for thought and I liked the storytelling.
There's some moment when I felt a bit confused but I liked it.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

Sharon Dodua Otoo's debut novel Ada's Realm is an ambitious and highly creative narrative of strength and resilience of women throughout time. By writing from multiple perspectives, from past to present, the story weaves together an astounding picture of feminine life that all women can relate to and find courage from.

The reader is taken on an emotional journey with the character of Ada through many tragedies, sorrows and injustices she must overcome in her journey to becoming the strong and courageous woman she is. While it's an incredibly dark novel in some ways, it is simultaneously full of humour, compassion and beauty, giving the reader hope in even the bleakest of situations.

The writing in this novel is stunning - Otoo creates a highly descriptive atmosphere with an evocative writing style that captivates the reader, making it impossible to put the book down. Ada's Realm is a masterpiece and will remain a lasting reminder of the importance of fighting for what's right and valuing the struggles of all women throughout the centuries.

This novel is a blend of Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction and Magical Realism, and it tried to accomplish too much. We follow 4 women, all named Ada, across more than 400 years, from 15th-century West Africa to present-day Germany.

It touches upon colonialism, racism, misogyny, immigration, motherhood, a world after #MeToo, trauma, and more, however, most discussions around these topics felt forced.

A lot of the characters were there just to facilitate making a point, they were two-dimensional and it was very obvious very fast what their role was. One of the narrators is a broom/door knocker/room/passport, and its mission is to reunite Ada with a specific bracelet (that in the end is not even relevant to the plot). God is a character in this as well?

We spend so much time following Ada, but we don't get to know her. I cannot name one personality trait of hers to save my life. Why did she make the decisions she made? All of that while the broom/door knocker/room/passport was fleshed out significantly more and I was rooting for it.

Sharon Dudoa Otoo’s intricate, debut novel grew out of her lingering fascination with Ada a minor figure in Otoo’s award-winning short story “Herr Grottup Sits Down.” Here Ada is caught up in cycles of rebirth linked to beliefs central to Ghana’s traditional Akan religion. Ada first surfaces in 1459 as a displaced, grieving mother in a coastal village in pre-colonial West Africa, her experiences intersecting with the catastrophic impact of Portuguese explorers intent on mining gold. Ada then reappears in England in 1858, a version of Ada Lovelace, her life complicated by a frustrating affair with author Charles Dickens and her relationship with her Irish maid Lizzie. In another incarnation, Ada finds herself in Nazi Germany, one of many women in a Lagerbordel, there to provide sex and “pleasure” for a select band of male prisoners. Finally a contemporary Ada leaves her home in Ghana to study in Berlin where an unexpected pregnancy and difficulties in finding accommodation confront her with the realities of being Black in a country dominated by whiteness.

In Otoo’s non-linear narrative, multiple timelines fray and overlap, slowly bleeding together, as Ada is forced into an awareness of the relationships between past and present, and the significance of buried histories. Ada’s journey is partially represented through conventions drawn from a fertile mix of magical realism and Afrofuturism. As in the earlier short story, a central character and commentator is an inanimate object, for Herr Grottrup an egg that refuses to be boiled, here at various points a broom, a room and a British passport pre-Brexit. An object that crucially remembers the things that each Ada has forgotten, her past glimpsed through random images, disconnected memories and the imprint of past traumas. In each era Ada is searching for a safe space, akin to the room dreamt of by Virginia Woolf, a place of liberation and creativity. Recurring themes highlight historical forms and instances of exploitation and othering from slavery to the Potato Famine and the treatment of Irish people in nineteenth-century England, through to fascism, contemporary manifestations of racism and cultural appropriation. Otoo’s isn’t, strictly speaking, an historical novel as much as it’s a novel about colonialism and the way in which legacies of the past haunt and shape the present. Otoo’s vision is sometimes based on research, sometimes inspired by readings of writers like Akala, and often inflected by her interest in the work of Brecht, Morrison, May Ayim and Buchi Emecheta.

It’s a fiercely political, committed work, clearly influenced by concepts of intersectionality, in keeping with Otoo’s experience as a political activist; while the later Berlin sections draw from her position as a Black British author based in Germany and writing in German. Despite its ambitious, outwardly-challenging structure, it’s a very accessible piece, with a strong emphasis on vivid storytelling, although it could also feel a little forced and didactic at times and I found some episodes much less convincing than others. Translated by Jon-Cho Polizzi

I am unsure as to whether I actually took in everything from this book but after watching a talk by the author, who stated that that is sort of the point, I feel a lot better, albeit hella confused. My interpretation was that our ancestors live within us and that their incomplete stories continue with us. I think a second, even a third, read of the book is necessary for me to get some theories established. I would have love to study this book at university had it been out then!

I liked this a lot! I think I would classify it as speculative fiction? Ada moves through time and space and worlds and through it all, she learns what it means to hold space for oneself and be the kind of woman people aspire to. Feels like the kind of book that would be taught in a literature class. Lots to unpack in a good way.

“Ada’s Realm” – Sharon Dodua Otoo (translated from German by Jon Cho-Polizzi)

Thanks to @netgalley and @maclehosequercus for a digital copy of this book in return for an honest review – this book comes out 13th April.

I have to be honest – I’m writing this a good month after reading this book, looking at my highlighted passages and notes, and I have no idea how to sum up this book. It covers centuries, continents and genres, all centred on “Ada”. So, I guess the question is: who is Ada?

Is Ada the West African girl in the 15th century, mourning the loss of another child yet clinging to faith, unaware of the upcoming arrival of Portuguese traders and the effects that this meeting will bring?

Is she Ada Lovelace, the mathematical genius, daughter of Lord Bryon, responsible for the Analytical Engine yet held back by society’s constrictions on her gender?

Is she Ada, a Polish woman in a German concentration camp who is forced to turn to prostitution to survive?

Or is she Ada, a modern day Ghanaian woman, pregnant and in need of a place to stay in modern day Berlin?

Sounds complicated? I haven’t even mentioned the links between these stories, the constant time loops, the themes of own voices and storytelling. There are elements of race and gender throughout, solidarity and support, mathematics and historical fiction – it’s a lot, and it’s a very ambitious first novel to say the very least.

Did I love this book? Honestly, no – it was too much for me, a bombardment of timelines and themes that I really struggled to keep on top of. I’m sure this deserves a re-read, and I expect to hear more about this book when it is published, but it was a lot for me. Keep an eye out for it, however, especially if you love more complex stories with deeper themes.

Ada's Realm is certainly a very new, bold, and inventive form of storytelling.
You get to see the various people who become Ada in each time that they are reincarnated, told from the perspective of a spirit that incarnates as different objects in her life.
I personally found the method of time-skipping narrative a little disorienting, and at times it was unclear who or even what was narrating, and who's life it was in.
Her guardian spirit(?) seems to have a grand plan at steering Ada's life, but in the end does very little. It complains to God ( a woman?) who only provides vague and mystical answers, with little to no useful or sensible bearing on whatever happens next.
It was a creative concept, and one that is rife with dealing with racism, historical oppression, reincarnation, sexual identity, and family--but I felt I had almost no information at the end, and was struggling to see what story the work was really trying convey. A little more clarity and a little less overly complicated exposition would have made this a more enjoyable read for me, but while this book was not my style, I am certain that this intriguing and feminine debut is the perfect story for many people to curl up with a cup of tea and read.

Ada’s Realm by Sharon Dodua Otoo is what can only be described as a high concept novel. Translated from the German by Jon Cho-Polizzi, it charts the lives of four women separated through time all called Ada through the eyes of a type of guardian spirit who occasionally has conversations with God.
Ada’s Realm opens in 1459 in a small village on the West Coast of Africa. A woman called Ada has just lost her second child and is seeking to bury him with a valuable necklace. Her grieving is interrupted by Portuguese invaders. Flick to 1848 and Ada Lovelace, widely regarded as the creator of the first computer program, is having an affair with Charles Dickens which is discovered by her husband. Jump again to 1945 and a woman called Ada has been put to work as a prostitute in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. These three stories weave in and out of each other and coalesce around the story of another Ada who has come to Berlin from Ghana in 2019 and is living with her half sister. The story of this final Ada, and her connections back to the other Ada’s and the bracelet that has made its way through time, is the main one of the back half of the novel.
So far so connected. But these stories, when not being told in first person, are narrated by a kind of spirit who watches over Ada but has little agency. In the 1459 section of the novel, the spirit takes the form of a broom that is used to beat Ada, in 1848 it is a door knocker, in 1945 it is the room that Ada works in and in 2019 it takes the form of Ada’s British Passport. This is a strange stylistic choice and it is never clear what the spirit is meant to achieve as despite all of its trying it cannot affect events but it does provide a unique view into the lives of the four women.
All of this strangeness though, is in service of something. And that is an exploration of a range of themes, particularly through the story of the final Ada – of dealing with casual racism, of struggling to start a family, of reckoning with centuries of female disempowerment. It seems that she is meant to be the culmination of the other three, taking elements of each of them – resistance, intelligence and strength – and deploying them to make her own life despite setbacks. But the structure and techniques deployed mean that this will not be a book that appeals to everyone. For those who do get on Otoo’s wavelength, though, there is plenty to think about.

This was such an interesting and original read that made me think about it long after I have finished. Well written with a compelling storyline and well developed characters