Véronique Tadjo
Véronique Tadjo
Véronique Tadjo was born in 1955 and grew up in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. She has a B.A. in English from the University of Abidjan and a doctorate from the Sorbonne in France. She writes poetry, fiction, and children’s books. Tadjo is an academic, having taught at University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, writing workshop facilitator, artist, and activist. She has received numerous awards for her writing, including the UNICEF Prize for her children’s book, Mamy Wata and the Monster in 1993, the Grand Prix Littéraire d'Afrique Noire in 2015, and the Bernard Dadié National Grand Prize for Literature in 2016.
Translated Titles by Véronique Tadjo
The narrative of this wonderful gem of a novel weaves together a rich tapestry of characters who are both nameless and faceless, representing everyman and everywoman, to tell stories of parting and return, suffering, healing and desire in a lyrical and moving exploration of the human heart. Like a bird in flight, the reader travels across a borderless landscape composed of tales of daily existence, news reports, allegories and ancestral myths, becoming aware in the course of the journey of the interconnection of individual lives.
Written 30 years after the Cote d'Ivoire's Declaration of Independence from France in 1960, this is an illuminating political allegory which resonates in many ways with the contemporary scene and current crisis in that country. Yet, this multi-layered narrative comprises a series of short stories and poetic texts threaded together that can be read across temporal and geographic boundaries both within and beyond continental Africa.
In Far from My Father, the latest novel from this internationally acclaimed author, a woman returns to the Côte d'Ivoire after her father’s death. She confronts not only unresolved family issues that she had left behind but also questions about her own identity that arise amidst the tensions between traditional and modern worlds. The drama that unfolds tells us much about the evolving role of women, the legacy of polygamy, and the economic challenges of daily life in Abidjan. On a more autobiographical level, the author depicts a daughter’s efforts to come to terms with what she knew and did not know about her father.
Drawing on real accounts of the Ebola outbreak that devastated West Africa, this poignant, timely fable reflects on both the strength and the fragility of life and humanity’s place in the world. In a series of moving snapshots, Véronique Tadjo illustrates the terrible extent of the Ebola epidemic, through the eyes of those affected in myriad ways: the doctor who tirelessly treats patients day after day in a sweltering tent, protected from the virus only by a plastic suit; the student who volunteers to work as a gravedigger while universities are closed, helping the teams overwhelmed by the sheer number of bodies; the grandmother who agrees to take in an orphaned boy cast out of his village for fear of infection. And watching over them all is the ancient and wise Baobab tree, mourning the dire state of the earth yet providing a sense of hope for the future.
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