Today it's my stop on The Secret of Karabakh blog tour and it's my pleasure to share an extract from this debut novel from Fidan Bagirova.
You are not who you think you are. Your future is not what you think it will be. You are in danger...
Alana Fulton, the beloved only child of wealthy American parents, is bookish and passionate about the past. In the final stages of a PhD in archaeology at the University of Cambridge, Alana's future is bright and assured. Then comes the anonymous note: You are not who you think you are. Suddenly, everything in her life - including her sense of self - is under assault.
As Alana flees unknown pursuers and mounting danger, all that is familiar crumbles away. In time, it becomes clear to Alana why she's being pursued; and she must ask herself where her loyalties and her future lie.
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Prologue
High on a green hillside, by a rock outcrop shaped like a cat curled in sleep, lay a young mother, her face turned to the earth. The cold wind snatched at the blood-soaked hem of her embroidered headscarf. Her arm was outstretched toward a child, dropped like a sack a yard away. The eyes of the dead child, a little girl, were closed. Her hair was the color of licorice, matted with dirt and blood. Wrapped around her neck was a pink woolen scarf decorated with chocolate-brown rabbits and butter-yellow ducklings; its fringe trailed in the congealing puddle of gore thrown from her body by a soldier’s bullet. Between woman and child, like an umbilicus, was a twisted gray plaid blanket, twined round the woman’s torso and the child’s limbs.
