By Night the Mountain Burns

Jethro Soutar, Juan Tomas Avila Laurel

From Shelf: Reading List: Black History Month UK 2023: Saluting our Sisters.

Exiled Equatorial Guinean writer shows the life of the native people of his West African island destroyed by distant rulers.

By Night The Mountain Burns recounts the narrator's childhood on a remote island off the West African coast, living with his mysterious grandfather, several mothers and no fathers. We learn of a dark chapter in the island's history: a bush fire destroys the crops, then hundreds perish in a cholera outbreak. Superstition dominates: now the islanders must sacrifice their possessions to the enraged ocean god. What of their lives will they manage to save? Whitmanesque in its lyrical evocation of the island, Avila Laurel's writing builds quietly, through the oral rhythms of traditional storytelling, into gripping drama worthy of an Achebe or a Garcia Marquez.

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