The Amputated Memory
A Novel
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
“….An expansive, eclectic, and innovative novel.”—Women's Review of Books
A modern-day Things Fall Apart, The Amputated Memory explores the ways in which an African woman’s memory preserves, and strategically forgets, moments in her tumultuous past as well as the cultural past of her country, in the hopes of making a healthier future possible.
Pinned between the political ambitions of her philandering father, the colonial and global influences of encroaching and exploitative governments, and the traditions of her Cameroon village, Halla Njokè recalls childhood traumas and reconstructs forgotten experiences to reclaim her sense of self. Winner of the Noma Award—previous honorees include Mamphela Ramphele, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Ken Saro-Wiwa—The Amputated Memory was called by the Noma jury “a truly remarkable achievement . . . a deeply felt presentation of the female condition in Africa; and a celebration of women as the country’s memory.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Cameroon-born, Ivory Coast based Liking (Love Across a Hundred Lives) centers her fifth novel on Halla Njok , 75, who resolves to honor the women of her Bassa clan and to "convey Africa's silences" by unearthing her memories. The result is an exhaustive, meandering bildungsroman, interspersed with chantlike songs of life in a fictionalized, strife-torn 20th-century African country recognizable as Cameroon. Largely addressed directly to Halla's grandiose and philandering father, the first part of the novel recounts her harrowing rural childhood during which her father rapes Halla, attempts to marry her to much older men and fails to provide a promised education. Further, as the struggle for independence plays out in the background, her father collaborates with the white colonial leaders rather than supporting the local resistance. After Halla breaks with her family and moves to the city, she sings at nightclubs and begins to develop as an artist, which leads to a lot of interior monologue. The novel's last third, full of long summaries rather than dramatized events, thwarts its promising start.
