World Literature: Patrice Nganang’s “Scale Boy” (Book Launch)

Nothing quite says City of Asylum like our World Literature series, featuring international authors sharing works from all over the world. In the first World Literature program of the year, Anderson Tepper will be in conversation with Cameroonian author Patrice Nganang. 

“Like Wole Soyinka, Patrice Nganang occupies a singular place in contemporary African literature and politics. The author of a monumental trilogy of Cameroonian history—from colonial rule to post-independence—he’s also been arrested and detained for his criticism of the country’s decades-long dictatorship. His new memoir, Scale Boy: An African Childhood, looks back on his experiences growing up in 1970s Yaoundé, a time of cultural and political fervor.” —Anderson Tepper

Scale Boy is an extraordinary chronicle of youth that evokes the paradoxes of modern Africa—complex, contradictory, and full of conflict, tragedy, and joy. In it, Patrice Nganang, the acclaimed author of A Trail of Crab Tracks, which was a 2022 New Yorker Book of the Year, writes about his vibrant, animated youth in Cameroon, a period of upheaval and change in the country’s history and in his life.

Scale Boy is a memoir that brings great brightness and joy to the tumultuous years of discovering oneself and one’s community. Despite moments of danger and confusion, Patrice’s story aims to present a new vision of a young Black African man’s coming of age.

You can purchase a copy of Patrice’s book, Scale Boy, at City of Asylum Bookstore.

About the Author:

Patrice Nganang was born in Cameroon and is a novelist, a poet, and an essayist. His novel Dog Days received the Prix Marguerite Yourcenar and the Grand Prix littéraire d’Afrique noire. He is also the author of Mount Pleasant (FSG, 2016), When the Plums Are Ripe (FSG, 2019), and A Trail of Crab Tracks (FSG, 2022). He teaches comparative literature at Stony Brook University in New York.

About the Moderator:

Anderson Tepper is a guest curator of PEN America’s World Voices Festival and a longstanding member of the Brooklyn Book Festival’s Literary Council and international committee. Formerly of Vanity Fair, his writing on books and authors has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and World Literature Today, among other publications. Anderson also serves on City of Asylum’s Advisory Board.

About Your Visit: 

The in-house restaurant, Cucina Alfabeto, is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, but a cash wine bar will be available.