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    The Heart of the Leopard Children
    The Heart of the Leopard Children
    The Heart of the Leopard Children
    Ebook95 pages2 hours

    The Heart of the Leopard Children

    By Wilfried N'Sondé and Dominic Thomas

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A nameless young man lives in the housing projects outside of Paris. When he was a child, his parents moved with him from the Congo to France, hoping in vain to escape poverty and violence. His best friend, Drissa, is in a psychiatric hospital and now Mireille, his girlfriend, the woman with whom he has shared his childhood and hopes, has left him to reconnect with her Jewish roots in Israel. During a night out to drown the pain of his heartache, there is a fight with a policeman, the policeman dies, and the young man is arrested and taken to jail. Between police beatings and abrupt interrogations, his memory becomes his sole ally to escape from the exiguous space in which he is confined. Half-conscious and delirious, he reflects on his journey from the land of his ancestors to his life in the projects with Drissa and Mireille. In The Heart of the Leopard Children, N'Sondé explores the themes of love and pain, belonging and uprooting, desire and fear—all with an implacable and irresistible accuracy. Wilfried N'Sondé's first novel awakens the reader with an urban symphony of desire and lost love, attuned to the violence that accompanies the struggle for social ascension and a sense of belonging, and the paralyzing sentiment of betrayal that inhabits a young man caught between traditions and cultures. Awarded the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie and the Prix Senghor for the originality of his work, the author captures the sounds, rhythms and pleas of a young man who pulls on the alarm from his prison cell to warn against the multiple barriers of confinement that risk the future of certain sectors of French youth today.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndiana University Press
    Release dateJul 11, 2016
    ISBN9780253021922
    The Heart of the Leopard Children

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    Reviews for The Heart of the Leopard Children

    3.5/5

    7 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A lot packed into this slim volume. Displacement of spirit, alienation, racial entrapment in multiple cultural and geographic worlds and spaces are, often excruciatingly, articulated with the whole panoply of emotion that should be expected. I don't believe these experiences are only confined to the Franco-Congolese, but the experiences of those from African cultures living in the midst of their former colonial overseers highlights cultural rifts throughout out current world. Parse this book if you seek to understand this better.
    • 3/5
      Won this in a Goodreads Giveaway in exchange for a review. This novella is essentially a stream of conscience of a French man that has just been arrested. Poignant style with a good translation. It kept me engaged and I was not expecting the ending.

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