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by Simone Antangana Bekono
A bold, unsettling, surprisingly tender debut novel for readers of Jesmyn Ward and Nightcrawling.
Salomé Atabong is the sixteen-year-old daughter of a Cameroonian father and a Dutch mother, living in the Netherlands. She arrives at a juvenile detention center to start a six-month sentence for a violent crime, which she did commit but does not regret. Expected to visit with a racist psychologist and perform her apologies, Salomé refuses to atone. But even if Salomé could get home, it would be no refuge: her father has recently been diagnosed with liver cancer, and her elder sister Miriam's main preoccupation is to get out of the village as soon as possible.
After months in the prison system, she realizes she must come to terms with the real reason behind her rage.
Raw and unsentimental yet lyrical, Confrontations captures the paradoxical demands society makes on Black women, the way communities, schools, and the prison system perpetuate racism, and the cost of Black female defiance.
"A tightly wound, forcefully lyrical debut novel by an award-winning Dutch poet ... A psychological mystery whose solution resides in self-discovery." ―Kirkus Reviews
"Salomé's sharp, voice-driven narration captures the tedium and frustrations of her sentence as well as the depth of her adolescent angst. The slow revelation of Salomé's crime maintains tension throughout. The final act, which chronicles her release, interweaves her feelings, thoughts, and memories from before and during her incarceration to skillfully portray the difficulty of returning to life on the outside. This one's hard to put down." ―Publishers Weekly
"Lyrical ... perfect for readers who value in-depth characterization. Salomé struggles with the quirks of teenagehood, a troubled home life, and the politics of navigating a world where underlying racist views are treated as normal and acceptable. In her complex and intricate first novel, Atangana Bekono does a fantastic job of exploring the internal conflict of wanting to fit in while also hoping to hold society to account." ―Booklist
"Fascinating ... The contrast between the poetic style and the brutal content makes the passage subtle and lively ... The refined depiction of these feelings makes the book intense and penetrating." ―de Volkskrant (Netherlands)
"A dazzling coming-of-age novel." ―Trouw (Netherlands)
"Hits like a punch ... a clever and disruptive debut." ―De Telegraaf (Netherlands)
This information about Confrontations was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Simone Atangana Bekono studied creative writing at the ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem. Her debut poetry collection, how the first sparks became visible, was awarded the Poëziedebuutprijs Aan Zee for best first book of poetry. She lives in Amsterdam.
Suzanne Heukensfeldt Jansen is a bilingual freelance translator, focusing on literary fiction and nonfiction. She obtained her postgraduate certificate in literary translation from University College. She lives in London.
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