Salutation Road took me on a speculative journey that left my mind asking questions long after I finished it. Gorgeous characters, I wanted to sit down with our FMC Sarid, drink peppermint tea, and chat through her experiences. She felt that real to me. Set in London the book follows a Somalian family as they struggle to belong in a post-Brexit Britain. Feeling adrift in life, and driven by a need to support her younger brother and sick mother, Sarid accepts a place on a top secret research project. She ends up taking a mysterious bus ride to her parallel existence in Mogadishu. Hers is a story splintered by immigration, about family, love, and letting go of a past that never existed. This was an incredible, emotional think piece that I would highly recommend and I gave 4.25 ⭐️

I would like to thank NetGalley and the Pan Macmillan for sending me an advance copy to read in exchange for my honest review.

Salutation Road is a novel with a compelling and thought-provoking concept. I was particularly drawn to the parallel fates of Sirad and Ubah, whose stories offer a poignant exploration of migration, family, guilt, and the weight of the choices we make—or fail to make. The novel captures these themes with depth and sensitivity, making for an engaging and emotionally resonant read.

However, I found myself wishing for a deeper exploration of Ubah’s fate. The transition from part one to part two felt somewhat abrupt, and her life and experiences in Mogadishu seemed underdeveloped, remaining at a surface level where more nuance could have added richness to her story.

That said, the novel is beautifully written, thought-provoking, and deeply engaging. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in literature that grapples with the complexities of migration, fate and identity.

The magical realism/time travel aspect of this book really intrigued me and the idea of a bus that could take you to a parallel life was fascinating, especially after reading last year's Ministry of Time, and if I'm honest I'd have liked a little bit more of that in the book than we got.
In fact for me I was always expecting a little more exploration of so many things whereas the book seemed to stay on the surface throughout.
However the experiences of being a refugee/migrant from one place to London was explored well, and the Somali community came through well and I did quite enjoy the book.

The author of this debut novel is a Somali South Londoner (which juxtaposition is key to the novel). Admirably as well as her day job marketing for UNICEF (the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund) she also founded and runs a literary organisation Literary Natives (https://www.litnatives.com/) which “provides daily inspiration, support and community for BIPOC writers all around the world”.

The blurb for the novel references Moshin Hamid and the comparison is apt as like “Exit West” it is a tale of migration which makes use of a fantastical device.

The narrator of the novel Sirad, who is twenty three at its beginning in August 2016 (between the Brexit referendum and the US election), lives in a small flat in Greenwich South London with her mother (who is suffering from depression) and her younger brother (meant to be studying his GCSEs but starting to go off the rails).

Sirad and her family fled Somalia when she was five, but later in her childhood in the UK where they immigrated, her father left home and returned to Somalia to have another family. Sirad is somewhat adrift – allowing the expectations of others to influence her own she told herself she was not clever enough for University and now works in a zero-hours advertising job. As the book opens her mother loses her hospital job putting the family finances under immense strain.

She then receives a bizarre letter from a project called UNCLASSIFIED from a group of researchers into the topics of technology and migration at an unnamed London university, offering her the chance to enter a “parallel realm” for a day to “experience [her] roots in an alternate lifetime”.

Assuming the letter is a prank she nevertheless accidentally ends up on what she thinks is a rail replacement bus service but where the driver announces “The first stop is Mogadishu” and existing what she thinks is the Blackwall Tunnel she does indeed find herself in the capital city of her home country – for a trip of less than a day which she spends with what is effectively a shadow/alternate family as if her parents had never left Somalia, spending much of the time with her double Ubah (who is desperate to escape Somalia).

Returning to her life in London, Sirad is at a loss to what to do with her experience, googling to see if she can find any references to the project she becomes over time aware of rumours of undocumented Somail migrants suddenly appearing in London and staying at a nearby hostel – and to her surprise this includes Ubah who with others appear to confirm her suspicions that the migrants are making unofficial use of the bus route (before Ubah goes underground after being the apparent victim of some predatory activities).

Just after Sirad, encouraged by a older librarian who has effectively mentored her for years, gets a permanent job at a magazine, she is again contacted by UNCLASSIFIED – this time for a debrief on her experience and how it impacted her. After that meeting dissolves in chaos – most of the participants as unsure as Sirad of what to make of their potentially life-changing experience after which they were simply abandoned – Sirad is offered money (money she uses to clear her family’s mounting debts) to give information on her interactions with Ubah.

[As an aside – and hopefully to be corrected in the final version – the ARC I read had a seeming continuity error – Sirad referring to an offer of money which is not actually in the text of the letter we read]

The writing is relatively simple and uses a present tense and I had to keep reminding myself (even as I wrote the review) that the protagonist is twenty-three as her actions read more like those of a teenager to me and the novel more like a young-adult novel. I was also far from clear where the narrative was heading or how the author was really using the idea of the bus journey.

Part II of the novel switches quickly to past tense to look back on a 6 years of Sirad’s life (her mother returns to Somalia, her brother turns himself around and becomes a software engineer post A Levels and University and she progresses at work) – before returning to the present tense with Sirad twenty-nine and a few months later married.

[Again I felt there was an anomaly in the text between two different descriptions of when Sirad met her husband]

Her initially ideal marriage grows some tensions over time from Sirad’s reluctance to give in to pressures to have a family, but suffers a more serious rupture when she becomes suspicious that her husband too has some form of involvement in the UNCLASSIFIED project and a return bus trip to Somalia and meeting with Ubah only leaves Sirad (and unfortunately for me the novel) more adrift.

I have to say that while I think the idea of the parallel life bus and the effective use of a “Sliding Doors” approach to thinking about migration is an interesting one – for example showing the parallels between the lives of (relatively) successful migrants and those left behind in failing states, the idea of how small choices (here when to leave) have huge future consequences, even the way in which well intentioned Western attempts to aid migrants get taken over by selfish agendas - I just did not think it was really very well executed here, or at least executed in a way I enjoyed.

And so overall this was not really a successful read for me - but I am sure will appeal to many other readers

My gratitude goes out to Pan Macmillan | Mantle for granting me access to this ARC. The themes and stories surrounding migration resonate deeply with me, particularly as someone who has left her own country. A book is truly captivating when it leaves you reflecting for days, trying to digest its complexities, and that’s exactly the experience this book provided. I can’t express enough how well the characters were crafted; their journeys, happiness, and struggles profoundly impacted me as a reader. I appreciated the sensitivity that the author infused into the narrative, which created a beautiful tapestry of the overall story and plot. This work stands out as a memorable piece of speculative fiction, powerful enough to give voice to countless other stories.

Really enjoyable and thought provoking piece of speculative fiction about a young woman who experiences an alternative reality of life in her parents' homeland in Mogadishu instead of her own life in South East London.

It's a meditative and thoughtful piece about identity, responsibility and choices, that's also highly readable with memorable characters. This is a unique book that has power.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about this book since I've read it.

It's such a thought-provoking and deeply introspective novel that blends the everyday struggles of a young woman, a child of immigrant parents, whilst providing the possibility of an alternate reality. Sirad's journey from her flat in South London to a reimagined Mogadishu offers a powerful reflection on the roads not taken and the impact of migration, family, and identity.

The novel’s premise is so unique and left me wondering about what could have been. Ibrahim does an amazing job at showing Sirad being burdened by the weight of her responsibilities, and suddenly finds herself in an alternate version of her life in Mogadishu. The contrast between her existence in Greenwich and the streets of Somalia is vividly portrayed, and the emotional weight of Sirad confronting her double, Ubah, is captivating. Ubah represents the life she could have had, and the novel explores how the choices of parents and the forces of history shape the destiny and ultimate outcome of her life.

Sirad’s internal struggle is the heart of the novel, dealing with themes of displacement and belonging. Ibrahim's portrayal is so real and raw, and as the story develops, I was hooked at the way small decision impact her future, especially with her relationship with Omar.

Salutation Road is such a fantastic novel that leaves you constantly thinking. Its exploration of duality, fate, and the immigrant experience is so powerful.

A must read.

Salutation Road is a meditation on the paths we take in life and how the outcomes of certain decisions can be very different indeed depending on which fork in the road is chosen.

Sirad Ali's parents free the civil war in Somalia for the UK but her father does not stick around for the duration. Instead, Sirad finds herself living a life that she did not really choose, and perhaps would not have chosen, had the choice been hers. Who would she be if her family had stayed together, for example?

But this is more than just a "sliding doors" story of what might have happened to Sirad if her parents had remained in Mogadishu. It is about how we become who we become, and the things that are at the core of us.

An interesting literary fiction novel about identity, destiny, immigration and kinship it gets 3. 5 stars.