📖 🎧 Blog Tour ~ The Mother Sun by Sui Annukka narrated by Nimmi Harasgama

Audible Original
May 2023

My thanks to the publishers and Midas Campaigns for the opportunity to listen to this book
and to be part of the blog tour.

Sent on a marketing conference from Sri Lanka to London by her boss, Surya is supposed to be enjoying a change of scene after a tragedy that has left her grief stricken and lost – and compulsively fixated on a long-buried, shameful episode from her past.

Finding herself in the same city as the boy she birthed for an English couple seventeen years ago – in exchange for the money that paid her college tuition – Surya is prepared to risk everything for a glimpse of him.

Surya promises herself that she will be satisfied with just seeing her boy and knowing that he is safe and well. But when she tracks him down and follows him to work at a local café, she is left with more questions than answers. Why has he dropped out of school? Why is he at odds with the world? As they get chatting and he offers to give her a tour of London, she can’t resist the chance to get to know him better.

Forced to confront her past, Surya starts to navigate a way beyond her feelings of guilt, shame, and grief, towards a hopeful future – but what will happen when the boy finds out who she is? Could finding all she ever wanted mean losing everything for a second time?

Sui Annukka is the Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction Discoveries Award 2022. The Mother Sun is an exclusive novella for Audible.

📖 🎧 My Review..

Surya has left her life in Sri Lanka to attend a marketing conference in London. The visit to London provides Surya with the ideal opportunity to find the son she gave up at birth, seventeen years ago, when she acted as a surrogate for an English couple. With no plan in mind other than to find her son in London, in order to check that he was well, and happy, Surya discovers that there is more to the boy than she expected and confronting her past is more painful than she could ever have imagined. 

Beautifully read by Nimmi Harasgama, the narration is pitch perfect, and each character, particularly Surya comes skillfully alive. The novella moves at a gentle pace as we learn of Surya's life in Sri Lanka and of her fears and anxieties particularly in light of a recent tragedy and of the cultural differences between herself and the boy she gave up at birth but whom she had never forgotten. 

Overall the 6 hours and 43 minutes of the story was an easy listen with interesting detail and there's a genuine sense of rapport between Surya and her boy which adds some poignancy to this story of motherhood, lost opportunities and forgiveness.

About the Author

Sui Annukka is a British author of Sri Lankan heritage. Sui has had poetry and short fiction published in the following anthologies: Filigree - contemporary Black British Poetry (Peepal Tree, 2018), Shots in the Dark (Crocus Books, 2018), Sounds Exceeding 80 Decibels (Crocus Books, 2017) and Elevator Fiction (Crocus Books, 2016). Sui currently lives in London where she writes and works part-time as a High School Teaching Assistant.

The Mother Sun is the first title from Audible’s collaboration with the Women’s Prize Trust and was an original commission offered to the winner by Audible as part of the Prize. As part of the commission Annukka received editorial support from Audible and audiobook production of her novella, which is brought to life by Nimmi Harasgama.

Twitter @suiannukka #TheMotherSun

@AudibleUk

@midascampaigns