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Forthcoming in July 2025

A powerful testament to writing as an act of beauty and rebellion that speaks truth and condemns violent legacies; a feverish ode that weaves together personal and national history to finally find healing.

This evocative novel from a giant of Malagasy literature tells the story of Hira, a writer who was born on the seventh anniversary of Madagascar’s independence. He is wandering through different cities on a book tour, but the experience is amnesiac and confusing. There is a past he is trying to reckon with, a turbulent past filled with violence against both his family and his country. He runs from his wife and represses his memories until it all explodes in fever dreams and a vomit of words. But in order to write the rebirth that he yearns for, Hira must write of his father’s torture, his tortured island, and how both were juxtaposed to his own happy childhood. And in combing through these various pasts, he might make the same mistake his father did: trying to change the world but leaving his own family broken. What will he return to in the end? His family or his island, history or exile? Or, perhaps, to her . . .

Drawing from the lived experience of both the author and his parents, the violence of both life and language, and the stories of both myth and history, this semi-autobiographical novel is a search for an individual’s place within larger collective trauma. Infused with Raharimanana’s signature poeticism and intensity, this is a masterwork by an as-yet-overlooked yet essential voice in the postcolonial tradition.