Descent Into Night

by Edem Awumey Narrated by Kevin Hanchard

Overview

Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award, Translation, 2018

From Goncourt Prize finalist Edem Awumey, a beautiful and brilliant new novel.

With a nod to Samuel Beckett and Bohumil Hrabal, a young dramatist from a West African nation describes a student protest against a brutal oligarchy and its crushing aftermath. While distributing leaflets with provocative quotations from Beckett, Ito Baraka is taken to a camp where torture, starvation, beatings, and rape are normal. Forced to inform on his friends, whose fates he now fears, and released a broken man, he is enabled to escape to Quebec. His one goal is to tell the story of the protest and pay homage to Koli Lem, a teacher, cellmate, and lover of books, who was blinded by being forced to look at the sun-and is surely a symbol of the nation.

Edem Awumey gives us a darkly moving and terrifying novel about fear and play, repression and protest, and the indomitable nature of creativity.

Editorial Reviews

MAY 2021 - AudioFile

In an unnamed West African country, a group of politically active university students decide to use street performance and the works of Samuel Beckett to battle against a repressive authoritarian regime and change the world. Award-winning Canadian actor Kevin Hanchard readily captures the sense of innocence, fear, and betrayal that one student feels when he is arrested and taken to a death camp, where he is starved and tortured until he is forced to inform on his friends. In the lofty tradition of George Orwell’s 1984, this brutal, poetic novel is as much about the guilt of survival as it is a testimony about the horrors of tyrannical governments everywhere. Narrated with sensitivity and clarity. B.P. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

MAY 2021 - AudioFile

In an unnamed West African country, a group of politically active university students decide to use street performance and the works of Samuel Beckett to battle against a repressive authoritarian regime and change the world. Award-winning Canadian actor Kevin Hanchard readily captures the sense of innocence, fear, and betrayal that one student feels when he is arrested and taken to a death camp, where he is starved and tortured until he is forced to inform on his friends. In the lofty tradition of George Orwell’s 1984, this brutal, poetic novel is as much about the guilt of survival as it is a testimony about the horrors of tyrannical governments everywhere. Narrated with sensitivity and clarity. B.P. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940177313788
Publisher:	ECW Press
Publication date:	04/13/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

Videos