Dark Heart of the Night

What is Africa's own "heart of darkness"? It is what confronts Ayane when, after three years abroad, she returns to the Central African village of her birth. Now an "outsider" with foreign ways distrusted by her fellow villagers, she must face alone the customs and superstitions that bind this clan of men and women. When invading militia organize a horrific ceremony that they claim will help reunite Africa, Ayane is forced to confront the monstrosity of the act that follows, as well as the responsibility that all the villagers must bear for silently accepting evil done in their name. Through Ayane's unwilling witness, Leonora Miano probes the themes of submission and responsibility and questions the role of Africans in the suffering of their fellows. Also exploring African identity,Dark Heart of the Nightis a profoundly disturbing novel in its evocation of the darkest side of people driven by their instinct to survive.

Léonora Miano was born in Cameroon in 1973 and lived there until moving to France in 1991. She has published three novels including L’interieur de la nuit. In 2006 she received the Montalembert Prize for a first novel by a female writer. Tamsin Black has translated Pascale Kramer’s The Living and Marie NDiaye’s Rosie Carpe, both available in Bison Books editions. Terese Svoboda translated songs from the Nuer, a Sudanese people, in Cleaned the Crocodile’s Teeth, and is the author of Tin God (Nebraska 2006) and Trailer Girl and Other Stories, available in a Bison Books edition.