Revolution Baby
Saffia Farr graduated from Exeter University in England and worked as a construction lawyer in London. At the age of twenty-six she abandoned her career and moved to southern Egypt with Matthew, a water engineer working on aid projects. There she retrained as a housewife and started writing; jotting notes in journals becoming therapy against the loneliness of ex-pat life.
After two years they were posted to Kyrgyzstan, a country Saffia had barely heard of. She was fifteen weeks pregnant with their first child and apprehensive about finding appropriate ante-natal care in a place so remote. After an anxious start she learnt to love Kyrgyzstan, a journey of discovery told with compassion and humour in her book Revolution Baby: Motherhood and Anarchy in Kyrgyzstan.
She now lives in a converted cowshed in England with her three children and Matthew, when he isn’t designing sewers in unknown places. Her writing has appeared in the Weekly Telegraph, Traveller, Voyager, Bumps and Beyond, on travel websites and local magazines in Kyrgyzstan and England. Her photographs are widely used in the third edition of the Odyssey Guide to the Kyrgyz Republic.
Saffia spoke about Kyrgyzstan and her experiences there at Stanfords Travel bookshop in Bristol and will be presenting in Stanfords Travel bookshop in London in October 2008. She also gives talks to libraries, primary schools, book clubs and in November 2008 will be speaking at a charity Kyrgyz Gala.
Revolution Baby is her first book and has been well received, described by Wanderlust magazine as "a great read" and by Katie Hickman, author of Daughters of Britannia as “one of the best [accounts of ex-pat life] I have read; equally, if not more, entertaining than a regular travel book”.
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