It is summer in Jeddah but Naser's life seems bleak. An immigrant in an unfriendly land, his friends have fled town for cooler climes and left him to his dead-end job and the scrutiny of the religious police, who keep watch through the shaded windows of their government jeeps. He spends his time writing to his mother in Africa and yearning to meet a woman - but in a country that separates men and women with walls and veils he feels increasingly trapped. Then, one of the black-clad women drops a piece of paper at his feet, instructing him to follow her pink shoes and suddenly his black-and-white life blooms into colour.

But relationships between unmarried men and women are illegal under the strict Wahhibism of Saudi state rule - and it's not long before their forbidden love must face the hardest test of all...

Addonia's beautifully written debut is an affecting, gripping, devastating portrait of the claustrophobic, corrupt and insanely inhuman world of Saudi Arabia * Daily Mail *
A love story set in the narrow and sweltering streets of Saudi Arabia... Details of life in Jeddah and the sense of barely contained passion are compelling * Sunday Times *
A dark and evocative testament to desire in an inhumane state * Independent *
Bittersweet and compelling -- Joanne Harris
A simple story is elevated by Addonia's mastery of tension -- Heather McRobie * Sunday Telegraph *
Heartfelt story of illicit love ... What's so interesting about Addonia's novel, though, is that it shows a man suffering from the consequences of the repression of women ... The frustration and loneliness he experiences living in a male-oriented world are powerfully depicted, as are the inertia, corruption and hypocrisy that flourish when morality is regulated by the state * Literary Review *
This tale of forbidden passion is tense and provocative... Compelling * Maire Claire *
An intense and moving glimpse into a world where love is an impossible dream * The Times *
Beautifully written, with an imaginative and poetic narrative style * Aesthetica *

Sulaiman S.M.Y. Addonia was born in Eritrea to an Eritrean mother and an Ethiopian father. He spent his early life in a refugee camp in Sudan following the Om Hajar massacre in 1976, and in his early teens he lived and studied in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He has lived in London since 1990. The Consequences of Love is his first novel.