English translation of Days Come and Go by Cameroonian author Hemley Boum is set for a September 2022 release by Bakwa Books in Cameroon and Two Lines Press in the United States. Days Come and Go is translated by Nchanji Njamnsi and will be Bakwa’s main fiction title in 2022. 

Boum is well-known in the Francophone literary world. Her novel Les Maquisards received the Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique Noire. Days Come and Go, which was originally published in French with the title Les Jours Viennent et Passent won the Prix Amadou Kourouma and has been translated into German and Dutch.

Translator of Days Come and Go Njamnsi is also Cameroonian and has been translating since 2012. He has previously co-translated a short story featured in Your Feet Will Lead You Where Your Heart Is, a bilingual anthology published in 2020.

Days Come and Go centers the stories of three generations of women in a family: “Anna, a matriarch living out her final days in Paris, Abi, Anna’s thoroughly European daughter…and Tina, a teenager who comes under the sway of a militant terrorist faction.” The novel is told through the perspectives of the different women to reflect the rapidly changing social and political landscapes of Cameroon. Séverine Kodjo-Grandvaux of Le Monde magazine writes: “Employing the portraits of mothers and their children fighting for survival in a crumbling patriarchal society, Hemley Boum blurs the lines between personal stories in Days Come and Go.”

Read the full synopsis and see pre-order options below:

“At the dusk of her life, Anna is cared for by her daughter, Abi––a reversal of roles which 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.”

Pre-order Days Come and Go: Bakwa Books