Democratic Republic of the Congo / All works
Narrative
Ahata, suivi du Récit de la Damnée
Not translated into English
Mweya Tol'ande · 1976
Synopsis
The volume brings together two short stories. In the first, Ahata, a young nurse, has been promised since childhood to Shallay, a friend she loves dearly; he went away for higher studies and rarely sends news, and she waits five years for him before learning that he has married a white woman, Jennie. The young man's parents regard this marriage as an affront and still see in her his worthy wife. In the second, the narrator is nine years old; her father, always drunk, beats her mother, and the little girl's childhood passes under the weight of a curse.
Context
The volume appeared from the Bobiso publishing house, in Kinshasa, in sixty-one pages; the author dates it to 1976, the BnF and the directories to 1977. It followed a collection of poems published by the éditions du Mont noir. Beverley Ormerod and Jean-Marie Volet in 1994, and Pierrette Herzberger-Fofana in 2000, summarise the two short stories in their directories of African women's literature. The first was reissued in 2021 by the Nzoi publishing house, in Kinshasa, followed by another text, Ngamalo.
Who it is for
Two short stories in French, about sixty pages in all; you can enter them knowing nothing of the Zaire of the time.
Prizes and reception
In 2020 the author received a certificate of merit for her entire body of work from the association of young writers of Congo.
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