A powerful, heartrending, and insightful novel of a trio of women in Cameroon who dare to rebel against oppressive, long-held cultural traditions--including polygamy and domestic abuse--that define and limit their lives.
Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan.
Inspired by the author\'s own experiences and written with grace, strength, and veracity, The Impatient is a moving testimony to a shared pain and a call for change--an unflinching depiction of the psychic damage traditions can have on the women who must abide by them and a denunciation of violence against all women and the normalization of domestic abuse--not only in Cameroon but around the globe.
In a society that demands female obedience, how will these three Impatient women free themselves? Djaïli Amadou Amal makes her literary debut in English with this remarkable novel that breaks taboos as it denounces the cultural mores of Africa\'s Sahel region.
Their lives are driven by impatience and clouded by the suffering rooted in forced marriage and physical abuse, but it is this oppressive culture that binds them together.
Yet Ramla, Safira, and Hindou are tired of waiting for a happiness that may never come.
They are reminded of the Fulani proverb which holds, At the end of patience, there is the sky.
They are told that their fates are the will of the All-Powerful, and that it is unthinkable--or rather, impossible--to defy tradition.
They are advised to have munyal--patience.
From an early age, these women were raised to submit to men, or risk shame and repudiation of themselves and their families.
Like her older sister, Ramla, Hindou is married off to a man she does not know or want, a distant cousin whose instability and violence terrifies her.
Safira, her co-wife, juggles envy and empathy for this new bride with disappointment in the husband she desperately loves.
In North Cameroon, well-to-do young Ramla is torn from her true love and wed to a manipulative older man. . .
Three women, three stories, three linked destinies .
A powerful, heartrending, and insightful novel of a trio of women in Cameroon who dare to rebel against oppressive, long-held cultural traditions--including polygamy and domestic abuse--that define and limit their lives
