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Her 2017 collection How the First Sparks Became Visible was widely acclaimed and won the Poetry Debut Prize Aan Zee. It has now been published in English. Confrontations, her first novel, has been longlisted for the prestigious 2021 Libris Literature Prize.

Simone Atangana Bekono

Her thoughts, memories, interactions with fellow detainees and reluctant therapy sessions gradually reveal the confusion, anger and sorrow that swirl within her, fed not just by the casual and sometimes aggressive racism of her provincial hometown, but also by the tug of contending family influences.

Atangana Bekono moves smoothly between registers. The dialogue is incisive and her timing and rhythm make the young characters ring true, even when using slang.

Her experience as a poet shows in her highly precise use of language […] When Salomé describes the circumstances of her detention, the sentences hum with the intoxication of violence.

Book

Fiction

Confrontaties

Salomé Atabong, daughter of a Cameroonian father and a Dutch mother, arrives at a juvenile detention centre to start a six-month sentence for an as-yet-unspecified violent crime.

Confrontations

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