Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award, Translation, 2018

Translated from French by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott.

From Goncourt Prize finalist Edem Awumey, a beautiful and brilliant new novel.

With a nod to Samuel Beckett and Bohumil Hrabal, a young dramatist from a West African nation describes a student protest against a brutal oligarchy and its crushing aftermath. While distributing leaflets with provocative quotations from Beckett, Ito Baraka is taken to a camp where torture, starvation, beatings, and rape are normal. Forced to inform on his friends, whose fates he now fears, and released a broken man, he is enabled to escape to Quebec. His one goal is to tell the story of the protest and pay homage to Koli Lem, a teacher, cellmate, and lover of books, who was blinded by being forced to look at the sun--and is surely a symbol of the nation.

Edem Awumey gives us a darkly moving and terrifying novel about fear and play, repression and protest, and the indomitable nature of creativity.

Edem Uwumey was born in Togo in 1975. His first novel, Port-Melo, won the Grand Prix Litteraire de L’Afrique Noire, one of the most distinguished literary prizes in Africa, and his second novel, Les pieds sales (Dirty Feet), was a finalist for one of France’s most prestigious literary prizes, the Prix Goncourt. Awumey now lives in Canada where he is a teacher.

Edem Awumey's profile page

Phyllis Aronoff, a Montrealer born and bred, translates from French to English, solo or with co-translator Howard Scott. She has translated fiction, poetry, memoirs, and works in the humanities by authors from Québec and France. Among her recent translations are Message Sticks / Tshissinuatshitakana, poems by Innu writer Joséphine Bacon, and novels (co-translated with Howard Scott) by Rima Elkouri and Edem Awumey. Her translations have won several prizes, including the Jewish Book Award for Fiction and, with Howard Scott, the Quebec Writers’ Federation Translation Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation. Phyllis is a past president of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada and has represented translators on the Public Lending Right Commission of Canada.

Phyllis Aronoff's profile page

Howard Scott is a Montreal literary translator who works with fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. His translations include works by Madeleine Gagnon, science-fiction writer Élisabeth Vonarburg, and Canada’s Poet Laureate, Michel Pleau. Scott received the Governor General’s Literary Award for his translation of Louky Bersianik’s The Euguelion. The Great Peace of Montreal of 1701, by Gilles Havard, which he co-translated with Phyllis Aronoff, won the Quebec Writers’ Federation Translation Award. A Slight Case of Fatigue, by Stéphane Bourguignon, another co-translation with Phyllis Aronoff, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Howard Scott is a past president of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada.

Howard Scott's profile page

"Artfully constructed, peppered with evocative phrasing, and skillfully translated, this beautiful volume is upsetting, poignant, and at times harrowing." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"This is a novel of emotional complexity, of what it means to survive through trauma, and the repercussions of that survival." --Montreal Review of Books

"The poetical lyricism of the work intensifies the power of the horror of the story being told. The prose is an unflinching spotlight that shines directly into that morass of unspeakable events." --Lisa de Nikolits, author of No Fury Like That

"[T]the story of Ito Baraka takes the reader on a journey into the darkest places of the human mind . . ." --The African Book Review blog

"Un récit poignant et magnifiquement écrit." --La Presse

"Grave, tragique, dur, violent, mais porté par une écriture fiévreuse, embrasée. La surenchère poétique n'est pas loin . . ." --Le Devoir