In A Trail of Crab Tracks, the award-winning author Patrice Nganang
chronicles the fight for Cameroonian independence through the story of a
father's love for his family and his land and of the long-silenced
secrets of his former life.
For the first time, Nithap flies across the world to visit his son,
Tanou, in the United States. After countless staticky phone calls and
transatlantic silences, he has agreed to leave Bangwa: the city in
western Cameroon where he has always lived, where he became a doctor
and, despite himself, a rebel, where he fell in love, and where his
children were born. When illness extends his stay, his son finds an
opportunity to unravel the history of the mysterious man who raised him,
following the trail of crab tracks to discover the truth of his father
and his country.
At last, Nithap's throat clears and his voice rises, and he drifts back
in time to tell his son the story that is burned into his memory and
into the land he left behind. He speaks about the civil war that tore
Cameroon apart, about the great men who lived and died, about his
soldiers, his martyrs, and his great loves. As the tale unfolds, Tanou
listens to his father tell the history of his family and the prayer of
the blood-soaked land.
From New Jersey to Bamileke country, voices mingle, the borders of time
dissolve, and generations merge. In A Trail of Crab Tracks, the third
part of a magisterial trilogy by Patrice Nganang, the award-winning
author creates an epic of war, inheritance, and desire, and of the
relentless, essential struggle for freedom.
