A Stranger in Olondria
2013 fantasy novel by Sofia Samatar

A Stranger in Olondria: Being the Complete Memoirs of the Mystic, Jevick of Tyom is a 2013 fantasy novel by Sofia Samatar. It tells the story of Jevick, the son of a pepper merchant who travels to the country of Olondria. Jevick encounters the spirit of a dead girl and is pulled into a conflict between two powerful religious groups.
The book is the author's debut novel and was followed by a companion novel, The Winged Histories, in 2016. It received critical acclaim, with critics commenting on its exploration of language, literature, and African traditions. It won the 2014 British Fantasy Award for Best Fantasy Novel, Crawford Award, and World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.
Plot
Jevick is the son of a wealthy pepper farmer. He lives in Tyom, an isolated village in the Tea Islands. Each year, his father visits the far-off land of Olondria to sell his harvest. One year, his father brings Jevick a tutor from Olondria.
“A Stranger in Olondria” enters the record as 2013 fantasy novel by Sofia Samatar. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Stranger, Olondria and fantasy can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q141452077. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2013, 2016 and 2014.
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This entry incorporates text from “A Stranger in Olondria” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.