The aquatics

Set in Zambuena, a fictional African country, The Aquatics follows Katmé as her structured life collapses. Her best friend Samy is a struggling artist and teacher. Katmé is married to Tashun, an ambitious politician who requires Katmé to play the role of the perfect wife. Twenty years after Katmé's mother's brutal death, a new road is being built over her grave. Tashun wants to use the exhumation as a political opportunity to run for governor. Despite Katmé's protests, Tashun charges her with building a house of mourning as part of her mother's new, lavish funeral. When Samy's latest show features art criticizing the government, he is arrested in retribution and accused of being gay, a crime in Zambuena. Tashun refuses to help due to the political risks. Katmé begins to rebel against the role she's been cast into, while Samy grows certain he must become a symbol of the movement to decriminalize homosexuality. Cameroonian documentary filmmaker Lewat's prose captures beauty and brutality while examining social constraints, corruption, and what it means to live truthfully.

Cameroonian filmmaker and photographer Lewat makes her English-language debut with a shocking morality tale about an African woman torn between her bureaucrat husband and her artist friend, whose homosexuality is a high crime in their fictional country of Zambuena. Katmé Abbia and her husband, Tashun, are patrons of her old friend Samuel "Samy" Pankeu. After Samy finds success with a pointedly political art exhibit, a newspaper outs him as gay, which is punishable by a life sentence. Samy is arrested, jailed, sodomized by his fellow inmates, and tortured by the police. Hoodlums sack the gallery where his art is displayed and deface his work. Katmé is soon forced to choose between supporting her friend and standing by her husband, who is distancing himself from the scandal amid a looming election campaign. Lewat pulls no punches in her depiction of virulent hatred toward queer people, and she illustrates Katmé's inner turmoil with vivid flashbacks, such as the death of Katmé's mother from internal injuries sustained in a car accident. This one hits hard. (Dec.)

An African woman's life is torn apart after the arrest of her best friend. Katmé Abbia appears to have a picture-perfect life. She's married to a rising political star in the fictional African country of Zambuena, Tashun Abbia, the prefect of the nation's capital; the couple has twin daughters together. She spends time with her best friend, Samy Pankeu, an artist on the verge of opening his first solo exhibition, one that is sharply critical of the country's social and political culture: "In Zambuena, people weren't arrested for expressing disagreement with the president or his party anymore. Samy had the right to sculpt and write what he wanted, to criticize whomever he chose. That was his role. The important thing was that he have no political ambitions, and since he didn't, there was nothing to fear." Then things start to go bad. Samy is arrested after a newspaper reports that he's gay; he's raped and tortured in jail, and his gallerist is beaten and humiliated by "Defenders of Morality." Tashun becomes increasingly physically abusive, angered by Katmé's attempts to free her friend from prison. Meanwhile, Katmé must coordinate the reburial of her mother, who died when Katmé was 13, and whose grave must be moved to make way for a highway. In Katmé, first-time author Lewat has created a memorable character who alternates between moments of weakness and strength in a way that feels thoroughly human. She addresses themes of political corruption and homophobia with an incandescent anger--at times, the novel reads a bit heavy-handed, but there's no doubting Lewat's sincerity. The prose, translated by Baudet-Lackner, is quite good, and the dialogue is mostly realistic, save for a few lines that seem forced. A promising first book from a writer to watch. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.