Things Nobody Knows But Me

When she is four yearsold Amra Pajali realises that her mother is different. Fatima is loving butsometimes hears strange voices that tell her to do bizarre things. She isfrequently sent to hospital and Amra and her brother are passed around tofamily friends and foster homes, and for a time live with their grandparents inBosnia.

At sixteen Amra ends upin the school counsellor's office for wagging school. She finally learns thename for the malady that has dogged her mother and affected her own life: bipolardisorder. Amra becomes her mother's confidante and learns the extraordinarystory of her life: when she was fifteen years old Fatima visited family friendsonly to find herself in an arranged marriage. At sixteen she was a migrant, amother, and mental patient.

Surprisingly funny, Things Nobody Knows But Me is a tenderportrait of family and migration, beautifully told. It captures a wonderfulsense of bicultural place and life as it weaves between St Albans in suburbanAustralia and Bosanska Gradika in Bosnia. Ultimately it is the heartrending story of a mother and daughter bond fracturedand forged by illness and experience. Fatima emerges as a remarkable butwounded woman who learns that her daughter really loves her.