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Léonora Miano – English Translation Release of “Season of the Shadow”
September 28, 2018 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm UTC+0
We’re incredibly excited to be hosting the author, Léonora Miano, in collaboration with the Cultural Services French Embassy in the US. We’ll have more info about the event’s specific program soon!
Léonora Miano is the author of Season of the Shadow, published in the United States by Seagull Books (distributed by the University of Chicago Press) in April 2018 in a translation by Gila Walker.
Born in Cameroon, Léonora Miano moved to France as a student. She has written fourteen books that have been translated into many languages. Miano’s award-winning first novel, L’intérieur de la nuit, was released in 2005 and translated in English by Tasmin Black. Her other books include Contours du jour qui vient, which was awarded the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens in 2006. Upon its release in France in 2013, the book Season of the Shadow won the prestigious Fémina prize and the Grand prix du roman metis.
About the book: Season of the Shadow
(Seagull Books, 2018, Translation by Gila Walker)
This powerful novel recounts the early days of the transatlantic slave trade in the perspective of its first victims, the sub-Saharan population. Léonora Miano presents a world on the brink of disappearing—a pre-colonial civilization with roots that stretch back for centuries. One day, a group of villagers finds twelve of their people missing. Where have they gone? Who is responsible? A collective dream, troubling a group of mothers in a communal dwelling, may hold some of the answers, as the women’s missing sons call to them in terror. At the same time, a thick shadow settles over the huts, blocking out the light of day. It is the shadow of slavery, which will soon grow to blight the whole world.
Miano renders this brutal story in deliberately strange, dreamlike prose, befitting a situation that is, on its face, all but impossible for the villagers to believe.