Indiana University Press blog

"Densely and beautifully written, the chapterless narrative absorbs like a thriller and reads like a prose poem. Sophisticated readers should grab." —Library Journal

A nameless young man lives in the housing projects outside of Paris. When he was a child, his parents moved with him from the Congo to France, hoping in vain to escape poverty and violence. His best friend, Drissa, is in a psychiatric hospital and now Mireille, his girlfriend, the woman with whom he has shared his childhood and hopes, has left him to reconnect with her Jewish roots in Israel. During a night out to drown the pain of his heartache, there is a fight with a policeman, the policeman dies, and the young man is arrested and taken to jail. Between police beatings and abrupt interrogations, his memory becomes his sole ally to escape from the exiguous space in which he is confined. Half-conscious and delirious, he reflects on his journey from the land of his ancestors to his life in the projects with Drissa and Mireille.

In The Heart of the Leopard Children, N’Sondé explores the themes of love and pain, belonging and uprooting, desire and fear—all with an implacable and irresistible accuracy. Wilfried N’Sondé’s first novel awakens the reader with an urban symphony of desire and lost love, attuned to the violence that accompanies the struggle for social ascension and a sense of belonging, and the paralyzing sentiment of betrayal that inhabits a young man caught between traditions and cultures.

Awarded the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie and the Prix Senghor for the originality of his work, the author captures the sounds, rhythms and pleas of a young man who pulls on the alarm from his prison cell to warn against the multiple barriers of confinement that risk the future of certain sectors of French youth today.

Fill out the form below by August 22 to be entered to win a copy of The Heart of the Leopard Children. 

Read an excerpt and check out the rest of our Global African Voices series.

"This novel is a miracle. Murambi, The Book of Bones verifies my conviction that art alone can handle the consequences of human destruction and translate these consequences into meaning. Boubacar Boris Diop, with a difficult beauty, has managed it. Powerfully."—Toni Morrison

In April of 1994, nearly a million Rwandans were killed in what would prove to be one of the swiftest, most terrifying killing sprees of the 20th century. In Murambi, The Book of Bones, Boubacar Boris Diop comes face to face with the chilling horror and overwhelming sadness of the tragedy. Here, the power of Diop’s acclaimed novel is available to English-speaking readers through Fiona Mc Laughlin’s crisp translation and a compelling afterword by Diop. The novel recounts the story of a Rwandan history teacher, Cornelius Uvimana, who was living and working in Djibouti at the time of the massacre. He returns to Rwanda to try to comprehend the death of his family and to write a play about the events that took place there. As the novel unfolds, Cornelius begins to understand that it is only our humanity that will save us, and that as a writer, he must bear witness to the atrocities of the genocide.

Fill out the form below by August 11 for a chance to win a copy of Murambi, The Book of Bones.

Read an excerpt and check out the rest of our Global African Voices series.

John R. Wennersten and Denise Robbins' Rising Tides: Climate Refugees in the Twenty-First Century will be available March 6, 2017 and is now available for preorder. In a guest blog post, the authors discuss how climate change affects environmental refugees across the world.

By John R. Wennersten and Denise Robbins

At this writing, Europe is under siege by one of the largest Syrian war-induced migrations in history. The war has dragged on for over four years now, taking more than 200,000 lives and causing untold destruction to the Syrian environment. Well over a million refugees have entered Europe, adding a complex religious mix to the already complicated issue of climate refugees. These streams of migrants may literally change the face of the continent in a generation. Optimists hope that through resettlement and education, the issues can be resolved. Others believe that this might be the time when things begin to fall apart in our global system. At present, while a dangerous situation unfolds, many world leaders have chosen paralysis and mutual recrimination. At this juncture, members of the European Union are discussing ways to keep further immigration limited to “documented” refugees.

In 2009, only 30 percent of Americans believed that the world climate was changing. By 2012, surveys revealed that 70 percent of the American people had come to believe that greenhouse gases have altered the planet. A new age of environmental—and subsequently refugees—had dawned.

Environmental refugees in an age of sectarian violence, civil war, and economic recession are not a flashy public policy project. Most policy makers wish that the subject would go away. But in an age when the world is being forced to bear witness to the fact that millions are fleeing their homes because of rising sea levels, desertification, drought, unprecedented hurricanes, tsunamis and war, the topic is stubbornly resistant to the kinds of public amnesia so often in effect in the world theater of nations.

We do not know how soon reality will trump ideology. At present there are lots of back and forth discussions between national and international leaders that haven’t been very productive. What is certain, however, is that climate change is not just changing the planet, it is changing human lives.

Murambi, The Book of Bones
Boubacar Boris Diop
Translated by Fiona Mc Laughlin

"This novel is a miracle. Murambi, The Book of Bones verifies my conviction that art alone can handle the consequences of human destruction and translate these consequences into meaning. Boubacar Boris Diop, with a difficult beauty, has managed it. Powerfully."—Toni Morrison

In April of 1994, nearly a million Rwandans were killed in what would prove to be one of the swiftest, most terrifying killing sprees of the 20th century. With a new afterword by Boubacar Boris Diop, Murambi, The Book of Bones comes face to face with the chilling horror and overwhelming sadness of the tragedy.

Mourning Headband for Hue
An Account of the Battle for Hue, Vietnam 1968
Nha Ca
Translated by Olga Dror

"[A] searing first-person account of the misery of war visited upon her family, neighbors and countrymen, caught in senseless, chaotic horror...A visceral reminder of war’s intimate slaughter."—Kirkus Reviews

Vietnam, January, 1968. As the citizens of Hue are preparing to celebrate Tet, the start of the Lunar New Year, Nha Ca arrives in the city to attend her father’s funeral. Without warning, war erupts all around them, drastically changing or cutting short their lives. Mourning Headband for Hue is an unvarnished and riveting account of war as experienced by ordinary people caught up in the violence of the fierce North Vietnamese offensive.

Interested in a chance to read one of our Winter 2017 books before anyone else? Of course you are! We have 30 pre-publication copies waiting to fall into the hands of some lucky winners. Enter our giveaways on Goodreads for an opportunity to win an advance reading copy of the following books:

• But What If There's No Chimney? by Emily Weisner Thompson and Mandy Hussey, illustrated by Kate Lampe 
• Earth As It Is by Jan Maher
• Elegies for Uncanny Girls by Jennifer Colville
• FTM: Female-To-Male Transsexuals in Society by Aaron Devor and Jamison Green
• Harvest of Skulls by Abdourahman A Waberi, translated by Dominic Thomas
• Letters from the Greatest Generation: Writing Home in WWII edited by Howard H. Peckham and Shirley A. Snyder, foreward by James H. Madison

The giveaways end September 30, 2016. All you need to enter the giveaway is a Goodreads account. Don't have one? Sign up for free!

Learn more about all our upcoming fall 2016 books in our latest catalog.

What's better than a book of amazing short stories? A free book of amazing short stories.

We are giving away a copy of new release And Yet It Moves by Erin Stalcup. Fill out the form below for a chance to win.

In this exquisite debut short story collection, people with unusual jobs and lives embark on extraordinary journeys. A taboo romance breaks the laws of gravity. Albert Einstein writes letters to the daughter he abandoned. A female physicist meets Stephen Hawking in a bar. . . . In the closing novella, All Those Stairs, an elevator operator with a genius IQ rides up and down all day enclosed in a metal box. Author Erin Stalcup explores these lives with remarkable compassion, depth, and insight examining loss and longing, and how our bodies and minds can be both weighted and freed. And Yet It Moves is a powerful combination of both absurdist and realist—stories that literally defy gravity.

Read an excerpt