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The narrative of this wonderful gem of a novel weaves together a rich tapestry of characters who are both nameless and faceless, representing everyman and everywoman, to tell stories of parting and return, suffering, healing and desire in a lyrical and moving exploration of the human heart. Like a bird in flight, the reader travels across a borderless landscape composed of tales of daily existence, news reports, allegories and ancestral myths, becoming aware in the course of the journey of the interconnection of individual lives.
WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE Harper’s Bazaar: Best Book of the Year Boston Globe: Best Book of the Year Ms. Magazine: Best Feminist Book of the Year Words Without Borders: Best Translated Book of the Year Drawing on real accounts of the Ebola outbreak that devastated West Africa, this poignant, timely fable reflects on both the strength and the fragility of life and humanity’s place in the world. Two boys venture from their village to hunt in a nearby forest, where they shoot down bats with glee, and cook their prey over an open fire. Within a month, they are dead, bodies ravaged by an insidious disease that neither the local healer’s potions nor the medical team’s trea...
Along with nine other African Writers, Veronique Tadjo was invited to visit Rwanda to bear witness to the genocide that took place in 1994 - wiping out one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus during a hundred days of barbaric violence.
"To attain some sort of universal value," Véronique Tadjo has said, "a piece of work has to go deep into the particular in order to reveal our shared humanity." In Far from My Father, the latest novel from this internationally acclaimed author, a woman returns to the Côte d'Ivoire after her father’s death. She confronts not only unresolved family issues that she had left behind but also questions about her own identity that arise amidst the tensions between traditional and modern worlds. The drama that unfolds tells us much about the evolving role of women, the legacy of polygamy, and the economic challenges of daily life in Abidjan. On a more autobiographical level, the author depicts a daughter’s efforts to come to terms with what she knew and did not know about her father. Set against the backdrop of civil strife that has wracked the Côte d'Ivoire since the turn of the century, this story shows Tadjo’s remarkable ability to inhabit a character’s inner world and emotional landscape while creating a narrative of great historic and cultural dimensions. CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature Translated from the French
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Yolande Mukagasana is a Rwandan nurse and mother of three children who likes wearing jeans and designer glasses. She runs her own clinic in Nyamirambo and is planning a party for her wedding anniversary. But when genocide starts everything changes. Targeted because she’s a successful woman and a Tutsi, she flees for her life. This gripping memoir describes the betrayal of friends and help that comes from surprising places. Quick-witted and courageous, Yolande never loses hope she will find her children alive. "This book was one of the first literary testimonies that I read in French about Rwanda. I found it profoundly moving — both realistic and introspective. Thanks to this beautiful translation, it is at long last available to the English-speaking public." Véronique Tadjo "Reading Yolande Mukagasana’s book in French at the age of fifteen changed my life. I realized that genocide is not a mass crime but a single murder repeated hundreds of thousands of times. With this testimony the genocide is no longer just a historical event, it is instead the story of a woman, a mother, a Tutsi. And this is what makes Yolande’s account universal." Gaël Faye
Tadjo uses her powerful and fertile imagination to rekindle an ancient Akan myth and deliberately sets it ablaze. Woven into the historic frame of the founding of the Baoule people by Queen Abraha Pokou in 18th Century Cote d’Ivoire. Tadjo explores not only the most intimate of relationships – that between mother and child, but also the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. Ultimately, Tadjo invites us to reflect on the bloody ethnic wars that engulfed West Africa at the end of the 20th century.
Written 30 years after the Cote d'Ivoire's Declaration of Independence from France in 1960, this is an illuminating political allegory which resonates in many ways with the contemporary scene and current crisis in that country. Yet, this multi-layered narrative comprises a series of short stories and poetic texts threaded together that can be read across temporal and geographic boundaries both within and beyond continental Africa. Veronique Tadjo explores multiple themes, issues and questions, which are interwoven into a compelling narrative of love and renewal.
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A collection of poetry in French by African writer and artist Veronique Tadjo, and the English translations by Peter S. Thompson.