Women in Translation Book Club: Ada's Realm

Please note this meeting will be in person at the bookshop. There will be a mixture of in-person and online meetings throughout the year.

The Women In Translation reading group provides a free, friendly and gentle environment in which opinions are shared and new appreciations can be discovered. A place for curious minds and relaxed conversation hosted by poet and translator Annie Rutherford.

For August 2025 the book will meet in person to discuss Sharon Dodua Otoo's novel Ada's Realm, translated by Jon Cho-Polizzi.

Please support the bookshop & the book club by ordering your books through Lighthouse, Use the code LONG-VICTORIOUS-WIT for bookclubbers 10% off.

The Book:

WHERE IS ADA? In a small village in West Africa, in what will one day become Ghana, Ada gives birth again, and again the baby does not live. As she grieves the loss of her child, Portuguese traders become the first white men to arrive in the village, an event that will bear terrible repercussions for Ada and her kin.

WHEN IS ADA? Centuries later, Ada will become the mathematical genius Ada Lovelace; Ada, a prisoner forced into prostitution in a Nazi concentration camp; and Ada, a young, pregnant Ghanaian woman with a new British passport who arrives in Berlin in 2019 for a fresh start.

WHO IS ADA? Ada is not one woman, but many, and she is all women - she revolves in orbits, looping from one century and from one place to the next. And so, she experiences the hardship but also the joy of womanhood: she is a victim, she offers resistance, and she fights for her independence. This long-awaited debut from Sharon Dodua Otoo paints an astonishing picture of femininity, resilience and struggle with deep empathy and humour, with vivid language and infinite imagination.