Set in the early 1960s, Sibi’s Adventures in Alahtene bubbles with dozens of breathtaking stories about the intrigues of adult life as much as about childhood in a rural community rapidly integrating into a newly formed African country.
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Paradise of Love and Pain is an excellent first novel that explores the extent to which sexual promiscuity and marital infidelity disrupt the life of Cameroonian families bringing untold suffering to children and parents alike. The main plot of the novel hinges on the actions of a wealthy and free-spirited woman who poisons her husband, Mr. Peng, to indulge her sexual appetite with her selfish and arrogant boyfriend, Tom. The plot is further complicated by Lydia’s affair with her young Pastor which results in the birth of a son, whom Tom thought was his.
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Babila Mutia is a master storyteller but he is a poet too, and his poetic sensibilities are not far off in these two masterpieces. We, the readers are at his mercy, devouring every word, and when we get to the last page, we are forced to confront the unstable nature of what we call our reality. That is, if we survive Mutia’s vacuum chamber!
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Gil Ndi-Shang (author of Letter from America) crafts a spiral of stories that connect diasporic life with home in all its uncanny complexity. The collection captures and coalesces diverse stories, voices, dreams, idiolects and idiosyncrasies in a poignant and dextrous blend of light-hearted humour and existential gravity.
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In The Vacuum Chamber, Mutia weaves two novellas, the first of which bears the book’s title wherein Fondo, a smart investigative journalist uncovers the elusive Dr Matanda and the workings of his futuristic institute. A Handful of Earth details the perplexing love triangle between Veke Lucasi, Saddi Tengene and Bridget Bijanga that dates to their elementary school days. This rivalry follows them all through life, climaxing in a brief romance and encounters with forbidden mystical powers engendering searing horror to the end.
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In this page turner, the author offers a vivid picture of Leinteng’s experiences as a young, foreign student in Madrid, a city far-flung from his native Cameroon.
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