The second volume in a magisterial trilogy, the story of Cameroon
caught between empires during World War II
In Cameroon, plum season is a highly anticipated time of year. But for
the narrator of When the Plums Are Ripe, the poet Pouka, the season
reminds him of the "time when our country had discovered the root not so
much of its own violence as that of the world's own, and, in response,
had thrown its sons who at that time were called Senegalese infantrymen
into the desert, just as in the evenings the sellers throw all their
still-unsold plums into the embers." In this novel of radiant lyricism,
Patrice Nganang recounts the story of Cameroon's forced entry into World
War II, and in the process complicates our own understanding of that
globe-spanning conflict. After the fall of France in 1940, Cameroon
found itself caught between Vichy and the Free French at a time when
growing nationalism advised allegiance to neither regime, and was
ultimately dragged into fighting throughout North Africa on behalf of
the Allies.
Moving from Pouka's story to the campaigns of the French general Leclerc
and the battles of Kufra and Murzuk, Nganang questions the colonial
record and recenters African perspectives at the heart of Cameroon's
national history, all the while writing with wit and panache. When the
Plums Are Ripe is a brilliantly crafted, politically charged epic that
challenges not only the legacies of colonialism but the intersections of
language, authority, and history itself.
