October 19, 2020
Tadjo’s resonant, unflinching latest (after Far from My Father) delves into the West African ebola crisis of the mid-2010s and how it played out in a region devastated by trauma and loss. As personal and humane as it is biblically grand, with references to Mary Magdalene’s visits to Jesus’s tomb, the novel follows a wide array of narrators, including a young woman sent away from her village to avoid the early ravages of the virus, a distressed NGO volunteer who is eager to help, teams of doctors attempting to contain the wider crisis while caring for individual patients, the infected fighting for their lives, and the bystanders hoping it will not happen to them. Over all of these voices looms another: that of the ancient baobab tree that has watched over people for generations and provides a vast sense of scale as it comments on the region’s history of devastation. Tadjo humanizes the crisis, and the most resonant scenes bear witness to the virus as it spreads in “silence, a thick, threatening silence, auguring even more harrowing days to come.” Brief and haunting, this makes for a timely testament to the destructive powers of pandemics.
January 1, 2021
This brief, resonant novel from Ivorian writer Tadjo (The Shadow of Imana), first published in French in 2017, follows fictional lives affected by the Ebola epidemic that hit several West African countries between 2014 and 2016. Each chapter features a new character, including a girl sent from her village to live with an aunt because her mother and brothers are dying, a nurse working to save what patients she can, a doctor who feels like "a trespasser in the Kingdom of Death," a member of the burial team haunted by the ghosts of the lost, and a European volunteer aid worker infected with the disease, who muses that "the history of Ebola is punctuated with speculation, questionings, incomplete answers, and a whole lot of theories." Boldly, Tadjo also gives voice to an ancient baobab tree observing human life, the virus itself, and the bats that transmitted it. The novel's structure highlights strong emotions, while clearly communicating the facts of the disease and the outbreak. Readers will undoubtedly be struck by parallels with the current worldwide pandemic.
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