For the next few weeks, we’ll be spotlighting our upcoming releases for the new year. You’ll learn a bit about our 2021 releases, their authors, and information about pre-ordering.
We’re excited to bring another work in translation to our catalog in 2021. Madame Livingstone: The Great War in the Congo by Christophe Cassiau-Haurie, illustrator Barly Baruti, and translator Ivanka Hahnenberger is a thrilling World War I saga set in, what was then called, the Belgian Congo. We’re thrilled to bring this book to readers in June 2021. Although we’ve definitely gotten into the historical fiction graphic novel game before with our King Shaka series, this release marks our first one for adult readers, and we can’t wait for you to see this gorgeously illustrated, beautifully written, deftly translated book this summer.
It’s 1915. World War I rages across the globe, and the fighting has also spread across the African continent. Mozambique. Kenya. Uganda. Congo. It’s in Belgian Congo that aviator Gaston Mercier, a lieutenant in the Royal Belgian Army, finds himself with orders to sink a German battleship on the country’s Lake Tanganyika. But it’s not a mission he can accomplish on his own. With help from a mysterious guide, called Madame Livingstone for the Scottish kilt he wears and his claims of being the son of British explorer David Livingstone, Mercier sets out on this nearly-impossible mission.
Little by little, while the war between Belgian and German colonial powers continues and the pair hunt down the ship, Mercier learns more about the land around him, and discovers the irrevocable and tragic effects of colonialism on the local people.
The story was written by Christophe Cassiau-Haurie, a library curator and comics specialist born in Cameroon and raised in France. He is the author of several articles and collective works on the state of publishing and comics in Africa, as well as several graphic novels based on African histories. It was illustrated by renowned Congolese artists, Barly Baruti. Baruti has worked at French cultural centers in Kisangani and Kinshasa, and is the founder of the Atelier de Création et de l’Initiation à
l’Art (Creative Workshop for an Initiation to Art) to encourage talented youth in Kinshasa. The text has been translated from the French by Ivanka Hahnenberger, a translator of several comics, children’s books, catalogs, business proposals marketing plans and much more from French and German into English. She is the translator of works such as Blue is the Warmest Colour by Julie Maroh and An Olympic Dream by Reinhard Kleist.
Of the story, Baruti said, “If there is only one thing to remember, after reading this story, it would be this: it is high time for Africans to tell the story of their Africa, and make it known to future generations.”
