Salie lives in Paris. Back home on the Senegalese Island of Niodior, her football-crazy brother, Madicke, counts on her to get him to France, the promised land where foreign footballers become world famous. Given his illusions, how can Salie explain to him the grim reality of life as an immigrant? The story of Salie and Madicke highlights the painful situation of those who emigrate. Others who feel this pain include Ndetare, the Marxist schoolteacher and football coach, exiled to Niodior by the government but never accepted by those born there. Then there's Sankele, his former lover, the legendary beauty, whose only way out of an arranged marriage ends in tragedy. And poor Moussa, whose dreams look set to come true when he's scouted by a big French football club, but which fall apart when he doesn't make the team.

?Rich in incisive and humorous insights about existing at the bottom of the food chain? Morning Star ?Entertaining? her writing has undeniable power and wit? Independent ?Diome offers many wide, poignant and sometimes inspired epigrammatic observations that skewer a very real sense of immigrant experience? Big Issue ?This lyrical account of the bittersweet nature of emigration is half poetry, half novel? What?s on in London

Born in 1968 in Niodior, Senegal, Fatou Diome moved to Strasbourg in 1994. She has taught at Strasbourg University and currently presents a cultural programme on the televison station FR3. She is the author of a collection of short stories called La Preference Nationale. The Belly of the Atlantic is her first novel.