Osvalde Lewat is not new to acclaim, but she is new to English-language readers, and that is about to change. The Aquatics, Lewat’s debut novel, translated by Maren Baudet-Lackner and published by Coffee House Press in the US and Cassava Republic in 2026, arrives carrying the weight of three major prizes: the Prix Panafricain de la Littérature, the Prix Ahmadou-Kourouma, and the Prix du rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature française. The novel is set in the fictional African country of Zambuena.

The story centers on Katmé, a politician’s wife living a life of privilege and suffocation, whose only real source of connection is Samy, a childhood friend, struggling artist, and gay man, in a country where homosexuality is punishable by law. When Samy’s new exhibition boldly critiques Zambuena’s inequities, Katmé’s carefully maintained double life collapses. Political rivals descend, threatening Samy with incarceration, and Katmé is forced into an agonizing choice: abandon her friend or destroy her family. Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, wrote that Lewat pulls no punches in her depiction of virulent hatred toward queer people, adding: “This one hits hard.” Booklist praised Lewat’s prose for capturing beauty and brutality while examining social constraints, corruption, and what it means to live truthfully.

Lewat was born in Garoua, Cameroon in 1977 and holds a degree from Sciences-Po Paris, with image training from FEMIS in Paris and INIS in Montreal. She began her artistic career in documentary filmmaking and photography, with her films broadcast by over seventy networks worldwide. In 2012, she won the Peabody Award for her BBC documentary Land Rush, which examines food sovereignty, imperialism, and land ownership. The Aquatics was her first novel, and it announced a writer of formidable range, one whose eye for power, complicity, and moral reckoning is shaped by decades of bearing witness on screen.

Translator Maren Baudet-Lackner is the recipient of a 2023 PEN Presents Award and a 2024 PEN Translates Award, and has received Albertine Translation grants for her work in both years.

The Aquatics is available now from Coffee House Press and Cassava Republic.