The Impatient: A Novel

Three women in Cameroon rebel against oppressive cultural traditions, including polygamy and domestic abuse, in the novel "The Impatient." The author denounces violence against all women and the normalization of domestic abuse and offers a moving testimony to a shared pain and a call for change.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 176 pages
Publication date: 23 November 2023
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc

Three women, three stories, three linked destinies. In North Cameroon, well-to-do young Ramla is torn from her true love and wed to a manipulative older man. Safira, her co-wife, juggles envy and empathy for this new bride with disappointment in the husband she desperately loves. Like her older sister, Ramla, Hindou is married off to a man she does not know or want, a distant cousin whose instability and violence terrifies her. From an early age, these women were raised to submit to men, or risk shame and repudiation of themselves and their families. They are advised to have munyal—patience. They are told that their fates are the will of the All-Powerful, and that it is unthinkable—or rather, impossible—to defy tradition. They are reminded of the Fulani proverb which holds, “At the end of patience, there is the sky.” Yet Ramla, Safira, and Hindou are tired of waiting for a happiness that may never come. Their lives are driven by impatience and clouded by the suffering rooted in forced marriage and physical abuse, but it is this oppressive culture that binds them together. In a society that demands female obedience, how will these three impatient women free themselves?

Djaïli Amadou Amal makes her literary debut in English with this remarkable novel that breaks taboos as it denounces the cultural mores of Africa's Sahel region. Inspired by the author's own experiences and written with grace, strength, and veracity, The Impatient is a moving testimony to a shared pain and a call for change—an unflinching depiction of the psychic damage traditions can h.

Weight: 138g
Dimension: 203 x 134 x 13 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780063141643