It was serialised as a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 and was runner-up for the 2003 Samuel Johnson Prize.

Reviewing The Devil That Danced on the Water for The Guardian, Victoria Brittain wrote: "Aminatta Forna's story of her father's execution on trumped-up treason charges, 25 years before anyone had heard of the Revolutionary United Front, gives a more personal framework for understanding the horror of the 1990s in the linked wars of Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea.

"[1] Booklist called it "stunning" and "an important look at the sad state of politics in Sierra Leone",[2] and the Library Journal saw it as "More than a tale of vindication, this book is filled with powerful descriptions and moving details and if overly long is nevertheless an important work.

"[2] Christopher Hope, writing in The Independent, stated: "Forna has written a book that is impossible to forget, or to confuse with any other memoir of tyrannical times."

and found it "an obsessive, driven, refreshing book about Africa, despotism and exile.