In Cameroon in 1931, Sara is taken from her family and brought to Mount Pleasant as a gift for Sultan Njoya, the Bamum leader cast into exile by French colonialists, when she is just nine years old. Sara's story takes an unexpected turn when she is recognised by Bertha, the slave in charge of training Njoya's brides, as Nebu, the son she lost tragically years before. In her new life as a boy, she bears witness to the world of Sultan Njoya - a magical yet declining place of artistic and intellectual minds. Seven decades later, a student returns home to Cameroon to research the place it once was, and she finds Sara, silent for decades, ready to tell her story. In her serpentine tale, a lost kingdom lives again in the compromised intersection between flawed memory, tangled fiction, and faintly discernible truth. The award-winning novelist Patrice Nganang's lyrical and majestic Mount Pleasant is a resurrection of the world of early-twentieth-century Cameroon and an elegy for the men and women swept up in the forces of colonisation. For readers of Maaza Mengiste and Taiye Selasi.

The English-language debut of an award-winning novelist, and a lyrical tale of transformation in colonial Africa.

About the Author
Patrice Nganang was born in Cameroon and is a novelist, a poet, and an essayist. His novel Temps de chien received the Prix Litteraire Marguerite Yourcenar and the Grand prix litteraire d'Afrique noire. He is also the author of La Joie de vivre and L'Invention d'un beau regard. He teaches comparative literature at Stony Brook University.


Book Information
ISBN 9781250118417
Author Patrice Nganang; Translated from the French by Amy Baram Reid
Format Paperback
Page Count 384
Imprint Picador USA
Publisher Picador USA
Weight(grams) 444g
Dimensions(mm) 222mm * 142mm * 25mm