Aminatta Forna (born 1964 in Glasgow, Scotland) is a Scottish-Sierra Leonean writer. She is the author of The Devil Who Danced on the Water , The Stones of the Ancestral World , The Memory of Love , The Mercenary , and Happiness . She has also published essays and articles, and written for television and radio. She has written for The Sunday Times , The Observer , and Vogue Magazine , among others. She was awarded the Order of the British Empire for services to literature in 2017.