NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
AND PASTE MAGAZINE
An intimate account of life in a West African fishing village, tugged
by currents ancient and modern, and dependent on an ocean that is being
radically transformed.
The sea is broken, fishermen say. The sea is empty. The genii have
taken the fish elsewhere.
For centuries, fishermen have launched their pirogues from the
Senegalese port of Joal, where the fish used to be so plentiful a man
could dip his hand into the grey-green ocean and pull one out as big as
his thigh. But in an Atlantic decimated by overfishing and climate
change, the fish are harder and harder to find.
Here, Badkhen discovers, all boundaries are permeable--between land and
sea, between myth and truth, even between storyteller and story.
Fisherman's Blues immerses us in a community navigating a time of
unprecedented environmental, economic, and cultural upheaval with
resilience, ingenuity, and wonder.