Baking Cakes in Kigali

By Gaile Parkin
(Random House Digital, Inc., Google eBook, 03wvErRZdfcC)

Publication Date: August 2009

Other Editions of This Title: Hardcover, Paperback

Categories: Family Life, Literary, General

Selected by Indie Booksellers for the September 2009 Indie Next List

“Cake maker Angel Tungaraza lives in a multicultural community in Rwanda, where she finds healing after the losses of her two grown children as she helps others solve their own problems with equal doses of common sense and kindness. Tragedy and humor find balance in this thoroughly enjoyable novel.”

-- Sandy Scott, The Galaxy Bookshop, Hardwick, VT

Selected by Indie Booksellers for the Winter 2011 Reading Group List

“Meet Angel Tungaraza, whose specialty is baking the perfect cake for any special occasion. Through Angel we meet various characters in her Rwandan community and learn of their challenges, culture, and history. Angel is part counselor, part matchmaker, mentor, and enforcer. Through her, Parkin portrays the strength of so many women whose lives have been marked by war, genocide, AIDS, genital mutilation, and more. These serious subjects are interwoven with hilarity, compassion, and humor. The book is a multi-layered cake, with surprise fillings between each sweet layer.”

-- Gayle Wingerter, Inklings Bookshop, Yakima, WA

Description

.Once in a great while a debut novelist comes along who dazzles us with rare eloquence and humanity, who takes us to bold new places and into previously unimaginable lives. Gaile Parkin is just such a talent—andBaking Cakes in Kilgaliis just such a novel. This gloriously written tale—set in modern-day Rwanda—introduces one of the most singular and engaging characters in recent fiction: Angel Tungaraza—mother, cake baker, keeper of secrets—a woman living on the edge of chaos, finding ways to transform lives, weave magic, and create hope amid the madness swirling all around her. In Kigali, Angel runs a bustling business: baking cakes for all occasions—cakes filled with vibrant color, buttery richness, and, most of all, a sense of hope only Angel can deliver.A CIA agent’s wife seeks the perfect holiday cake but walks away with something far sweetera former boy-soldier orders an engagement cake, then, between sips of tea, shares an enthralling storyweary human rights workerslovesick limo drivers. Amid this cacophony of native tongues, love affairs, and confessions, Angel’s kitchen is an oasis where people tell their secrets, where hope abounds and help awaits. In this unlikely place, in the heart of Rwanda, unexpected things are beginning to happen: A most unusual wedding is planneda heartbreaking mystery—involving Angel’s own family—unravelsand extraordinary connections are being made among the men and women who have tasted Angel’s beautiful cakesas a chain of events unfolds that will change Angel’s life—and the lives of those around her—in the most astonishing ways.

About the Author

Gaile Parkin was born and raised in Zambia and studied at universities in South Africa and England. She has lived in many different parts of Africa, including Rwanda, where Baking Cakes in Kigali is set. She spent two years in Rwanda as a VSO volunteer at the new university doing a wide range of work: teaching, mentoring, writing learning materials, working with the campus clinic to counsel students with HIV/AIDS, and doing gender advocacy and empowerment work. Evenings and weekends, she counselled women and girls who were survivors. Many of the stories told by the characters in Baking Cakes for Kigali are based on or inspired by stories Parkin was told herself. She is currently a freelance consultant in the fields of education, gender, and HIV/AIDS.

Praise For Baking Cakes in Kigali…

“A charming and beautifully written novel of life in a country recovering from terrible horrors. Beguiling…Gaile Parkin’s creation Angel Tungaraza is sure to win over readers.” —Bookseller

- More Indie Next Lists -

	1Q84 Haruki Murakami Knopf
	The Marriage Plot Jeffrey Eugenides Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
	The Sense of an Ending Julian Barnes Knopf
	Death Comes to Pemberley PD James Knopf