At the dusk of her life, Anna is cared for by her daughter, Abi––a reversal of roles that draws mother and daughter closer and opens a window into their lives. Opening with the memories of the dying protagonist, Days Come and Go is the exciting story of three Cameroonian women from three generations: a young Anna who, allured by Western education, finds herself in the midst of a conflict between modernity and tradition; Abi, the journalist, whose liberating idyll with a married artist plunges her tepid family life into turmoil; and Tina, Anna’s young neighbour in Douala, who falls into the clutches of Islamists. The fates of the women in this novel span––and inevitably intertwine with––the history of Cameroon, from pre-colonial and colonial times through the independence movements to the contemporary terror of Boko Haram.
Read an excerpt published by LitHub.
From Bakwa Books:
We are pleased to announce that our main fiction title for 2022 is Days Come and Go by Hemley Boum (translated by Nchanji Njamnsi).
In 2020, Bakwa Books acquired English Sub-saharan Africa translation rights for Hemley Boum’s novel, Les jours viennent et passent, from the Astier-Pécher Literary & Film Agency and commissioned a translation by Nchanji Njamnsi. Days Come and Go is scheduled for a simultaneous release by Bakwa Books in Cameroon and Two Lines Press in the United States of America in September 2022. Available in South Africa, October 2022 from Protea Distribution – distributed in SA by Pulani Publications (of Modjaji Books).
