Léonora Miano Books

Now in paperback, a brutal and dreamlike story about the first victims of the transatlantic slave trade. This powerful novel presents the early days of the transatlantic slave trade from a new perspective: that of the sub-Saharan population that became its first victims. Cameroonian novelist Léonora Miano presents a world on the brink of disappearing--a pre-colonial civilization with roots that stretch back for centuries. One day, a group of villagers finds twelve of their people missing. Where have they gone? Who is responsible? A collective dream, troubling a group of mothers in a communal dwelling, may have some of the answers, as the women's missing sons call to them in terror; at the same time, a thick shadow settles over the huts, blocking out the light of day. It is the shadow of slavery, which will soon grow to blight the whole world. Miano renders this brutal story in deliberately strange, dreamlike prose, befitting a situation that is, on its face, all but impossible for the villagers to believe.

A haunting, multivocal novel full of stories of the lives of women of African descent. Four women speak. They speak to the same man, who is not there. He is the son of the first, the great-yet-impossible love of the second, the platonic companion of the third, the older brother of the last. Speaking to him in his absence, it is to themselves that these women turn, examining their own stories to make sense of their journey, from twilight to twilight, through a mysterious stormy night in the middle of the dry season. Together, the voices in Twilight of Torment: Melancholy, the first volume of a two-volume novel, perform a powerful and sometimes discordant jazz-inspired chorus about issues such as femininity, sexuality, self-love and the intrusion of history into the intimate lives of people of African descent. Blackness confronts African-ness, love is sometimes discovered in the arms of another woman, the African renaissance tries to establish itself on the rubble of a self-esteem damaged by history. Each of these women, with her own language and rhythm, ultimately represents a specific aspect of the tormented history of Africans in today's world, and at the end of the night they will each arrive at a dawn of hope.

A searing novel exploring the construction of masculinity in sub-Saharan Africa. After beating his girlfriend and leaving her for dead on the street, Amok retraces his steps. Frightened by his act, which reproduces the violence of his father, he hopes to save the woman. But it is too late when he arrives at the scene; two women are already carrying the injured woman. Overwhelmed and not daring to reveal himself, he decides to find his father in order to learn how to rid himself of the dark force that he believes runs through the men of his lineage. He embarks on a journey that will be, more than anything, an inner one, forcing him to understand his story and choose a healthier way of being in the world. This second volume of Twilight of Torment is both intimate and political. Through the story of a man and his family, we discover an African bourgeoisie and its many social wanderings in a contemporary Africa whose future seems nebulous.

What is Africa's own 'heart of darkness'? It is what confronts Ayane when, after three years abroad, she returns to the Central African village of her birth. Now an 'outsider' with foreign ways distrusted by her fellow villagers, she must face alone the customs and superstitions that bind this clan of men and women.