Patrice Nganang
Cameroon
Patrice (born 1970) is an award-winning Cameroonian novelist, poet, essayist and professor of Literary and Cultural Theory at Stony Brook University, New York. He investigates the diverse ramifications of violence and is particularly interested in what is commonly referred to as the "colonial archive" (pictures, books, instruments). He published on numerous topics related to postcolonial African literature, theatres and cultures. In his writing, his goal is to transform the city of his birth, Yaounde, into a library, to reconstruct the voices, smells, tastes and languages of people, animals and plants, in order to create a sense of that city in letters.
(source: https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/cscl/people/patrice%20nganang.html)
What you can't miss:
Patrice Nganang chronicles the fight for Cameroonian independence through the story of a father’s love for his family and his land and of the long-silenced secrets of his former life. From New Jersey to Bamileke country, voices mingle, the borders of time dissolve, and generations merge. In this third part of a magisterial trilogy, the award-winning author creates an epic of war, inheritance, and desire, and of the relentless, essential struggle for freedom.
Reviews:
Patrice Nganang recounts the story of Cameroons forced entry into World War II, and in the process complicates our own understanding of that globe-spanning conflict. He questions the colonial record and recenters African perspectives at the heart of Cameroons national history, all the while writing with wit and panache. This is a brilliantly crafted, politically charged epic that challenges not only the legacies of colonialism but the intersections of language, authority, and history itself.
Review:
A majestic tale of colonialism and transformation, this novel tells the astonishing story of the birth of modern Cameroon, a place subject to the whims of the French and the Germans, yet engaged in a cultural revolution. It is s a lyrical resurrection of early-twentieth-century Cameroon and an elegy to the people swept up in the forces of colonization.
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