The Eternal Audience of One
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
“Meet the future of African literature” (Mukoma Wa Ngugi, author of Nairobi Heat) with this “gorgeous, wildly funny, and, above all, profoundly moving and humane” (Peter Orner, author of Am I Alone Here) coming-of-age tale following a young man who is forced to flee his homeland of Rwanda and make sense of his reality.
Nobody ever makes it to the start of a story, not even the people in it. The most one can do is make some sort of start and then work toward some kind of ending.
One might as well start with Séraphin: playlist-maker, nerd-jock hybrid, self-appointed merchant of cool, Rwandan, stifled and living in Namibia. Soon he will leave the confines of his family life for the cosmopolitan city of Cape Town, where loyal friends, hormone-saturated parties, adventurous conquests, and race controversies await. More than that, his long-awaited final year in law school promises to deliver a crucial puzzle piece of the Great Plan immigrant: a degree from a prestigious university.
But a year is more than the sum of its parts, and en route to the future, the present must be lived through and even the past must be survived in this “hilarious and heartbreaking” (Adam Smyer, author of Knucklehead) intersection of pre- and post-1994 Rwanda, colonial and post-independence Windhoek, Paris and Brussels in the 70s, Nairobi public schools, and the racially charged streets of Cape Town.
“Visually striking and beautiful told with youthful energy and hard-won wisdom” (Rabeah Ghaffari, author of To Keep the Sun Alive), The Eternal Audience of One is a lyrical and piquant tale of family, migration, friendship, war, identity, and race that will sweep you off your feet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A law student contends with his family and future prospects in this funny and incisive debut from Namibian writer Ngamije. In the weeks before 24-year-old Séraphin's final year of law school in Cape Town, he visits his parents in Windhoek, Namibia, where they landed after fleeing Rwanda when Séraphin was nine, and where "the best thing to do... is arrive and leave." Therése, his commanding, French-educated mother, still struggles with their reduced status as immigrants, while his father, Guillome, devotes himself to a low-paying job at a government agency. Back in South Africa, Séraphin hangs out with fellow students, squeaks by at school, and cycles through brief relationships with women while nursing his wounds from past relationships. After Andrew, the only white person in his group of friends, brings around his family friend Silmary, she and Séraphin begin sleeping together, leading to a dramatic fight with Andrew. Flashbacks and ruminations from Séraphin and his parents lead to a revelatory conclusion that impacts all of them, and create a vivid catalog of sorrows, embarrassments, and barely concealed hostilities, which Ngamije conveys through Séraphin's sly commentary (his "weather report" for Cape Town: "Mild racism with scattered xenophobic showers. Watch out for house parties, folks!"). Fans of Brandon Taylor's work will love this.
