SALUTATION ROAD

244pp., paperback, Mantle, London, 2025

ISBN: 9781035044351

Just for a day, twenty-three-year-old Sirad Ali finds herself transported from her challenging life in London to an alternate timeline in present-day Mogadishu, where she encounters an almost unrecognisable version of her family and meets her double, Ubah – the woman she could have been had her parents not fled to London during the Somali Civil War.

"A bold, intriguing act of imagination ... Salutation Road confronts important questions about parallel existences splintered by immigration, the price of survival, and the ways migration and distance reshape blood ties and family" Aube Rey Lescure, author of River East, River West

"A vital exploration ... Salutation Road interrogates who and what we would be if our family histories were different, how far we will go for those we love and how much we can ever really know about ourselves. A brilliant debut from a promising new voice" Nadeine Asbali, author of Veiled Threat

Salma Ibrahim is a novelist, short-story writer and marketing manager at UNICEF, currently living in London. While still in development, Salutation Road won the 2019 London Writers Award.