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Wilfried N'Sondé

A nameless young man lives in the housing projects outside of Paris. When he was a child, his parents moved with him from the Congo to France, hoping in vain to escape poverty and violence. His best friend, Drissa, is in a psychiatric hospital and now Mireille, his girlfriend, the woman with whom he has shared his childhood and hopes, has left him to reconnect with her Jewish roots in Israel. During a night out to drown the pain of his heartache, there is a fight with a policeman, the policeman dies, and the young man is arrested and taken to jail. Between police beatings and abrupt interrogations, his memory becomes his sole ally to escape from the exiguous space in which he is confined. Half-conscious and delirious, he reflects on his journey from the land of his ancestors to his life in the projects with Drissa and Mireille. In The Heart of the Leopard Children, N'Sondé explores the themes of love and pain, belonging and uprooting, desire and fear—all with an implacable and irresistible accuracy. Wilfried N'Sondé's first novel awakens the reader with an urban symphony of desire and lost love, attuned to the violence that accompanies the struggle for social ascension and a sense of belonging, and the paralyzing sentiment of betrayal that inhabits a young man caught between traditions and cultures. Awarded the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie and the Prix Senghor for the originality of his work, the author captures the sounds, rhythms and pleas of a young man who pulls on the alarm from his prison cell to warn against the multiple barriers of confinement that risk the future of certain sectors of French youth today.

Indiana University Press

Global African Voices

The Heart of the Leopard Children

Karen Lindo

Aminata Sow Fall

In Senegal, three modest families share a courtyard. This common space is a small paradise where they meet to cook, dine, talk, evoke memories, and grow together. At one Sunday family gathering, the usual post-meal conversation turns tense when Sada's adolescent son, Dieìry, asks why his father was so friendly with a government official at a televised ribbon-cutting the day before. The conversation quickly devolves into one about respect and duty.

In Empire of Illusion, legendary Senegalese novelist Aminata Sow Fall, explores the powerful themes of family, respect, and ethics. What respect does a son owe his father—and vice versa? How does a family maintain a balance of debate and respect? How does a person maintain self-respect when forced to swim in ethically muddy waters? Aminata Sow Fall, the matriarch of Senegalese social-realist fiction delivers yet another trenchant examination of her society, and of the universal challenge of finding, keeping, and giving respect to oneself and others.

The Empire of Illusion

Meg Furniss Weisberg

In Koli Jean Bofane

To the sound of machine gun fire and the smell of burning flesh, award-winning author In Koli Jean Bofane leads readers on a perilous, satirical journey through the civil conflict and political instability that have been the logical outcome of generations of rapacious multinational corporate activity, corrupt governance, widespread civil conflict, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation in Africa. Isookanga, a Congolese Pygmy, grows up in a small village with big dreams of becoming rich. His vision of the world is shaped by his exploits in Raging Trade, an online game where he seizes control of the world's natural resources by any means possible: high-tech weaponry, slavery, and even genocide. Isookanga leaves his sleepy village to make his fortune in the pulsating capital Kinshasa, where he joins forces with street children, warlords, and a Chinese victim of globalization in this blistering novel about capitalism, colonialism, and the world haunted by the ghosts of Bismarck and Leopold II. Told with just enough levity to make it truly heartbreaking, Congo Inc. is a searing tale about ecological, political, and economic failure.

Congo Inc.: Bismarck's Testament

Marjolijn de Jager

A young immigrant yearns to escape her bleak Parisian housing project in this novel by an author who “wields a precise and poetic pen” (Radio France Internationale).

Behind the bars on her window, Rosa Maria dreams of sunshine, love, calm, and leaving the city where she lives with her family. She suffers her father’s beatings, hides her femininity behind shapeless clothing, and pines for the beautiful Jason as she awaits her opportunity to flee.

Meanwhile, her older brother is found dead in a nearby parking lot, and the neighborhood explodes in a riot against the police. Rosa Maria resolves to act before she is devoured by family intrigues and despair. The powerful voice of Wilfried N’Sondé, a recipient of multiple literary prizes in France, creates a palpable sense of the absence of hope and the social and racial isolation that pervade the Paris projects, even as he never abandons the expansive capacity of individuals to dream of better lives beyond a seemingly hopeless reality

Concrete Flowers: A Novel