When the plums are ripe / Patrice Nganang ; translated from the French by Amy B. Reid.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Nganang, Alain Patrice, author.

Contributor:

Reid, Amy Baram, 1964- translator.

Standardized Title:

Saison des prunes. English

Language:

English

French

Subjects (All):

Colonies.

History.

Colonization.

Cameroon--Colonization--History--20th century--Fiction.

Cameroon.

France--Colonies--Cameroon--History--Fiction.

France.

Genre:

Novels.

Historical fiction.

Fiction.

Physical Description:

348 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm

Edition:

First American edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019.

Language Note:

Translated from the French.

Summary:

In Cameroon, plum season is a highly anticipated time of year. But for the narrator of When the Plums Are Ripe, the poet Pouka, the season reminds him of the "time when our country had discovered the root not so much of its own violence as that of the world's own, and, in response, had thrown its sons who at that time were called Senegalese infantrymen into the desert, just as in the evenings the sellers throw all their still-unsold plums into the embers." In this novel of radiant lyricism, Patrice Nganang recounts the story of Cameroon's forced entry into World War II, and in the process complicates our own understanding of that globe-spanning conflict. After the fall of France in 1940, Cameroon found itself caught between Vichy and the Free French at a time when growing nationalism advised allegiance to neither regime, and was ultimately dragged into fighting throughout North Africa on behalf of the Allies.Moving from Pouka's story to the campaigns of the French general Leclerc and the battles of Kufra and Murzuk, Nganang questions the colonial record and recenters African perspectives at the heart of Cameroon's national history, all the while writing with wit and panache. When the Plums Are Ripe is a brilliantly crafted, politically charged epic that challenges not only the legacies of colonialism but also the intersections of language, authority, and history itself.

ISBN:

9780374288990

0374288992

OCLC:

1053584221