Confrontations

A bold, unsettling, surprisingly tender debut novel for readers of Jesmyn Ward and Nightcrawling.

Salomé Atabong is the sixteen-year-old daughter of a Cameroonian father and a Dutch mother, living in the Netherlands. She arrives at a juvenile detention center to start a six-month sentence for a violent crime, which she did commit but does not regret. Expected to visit with a racist psychologist and perform her apologies, Salomé refuses to atone. But even if Salomé could get home, it would be no refuge: her father has recently been diagnosed with liver cancer, and her elder sister Miriam's main preoccupation is to get out of the village as soon as possible.

After months in the prison system, she realizes she must come to terms with the real reason behind her rage. 

Raw and unsentimental yet lyrical, Confrontations captures the paradoxical demands society makes on Black women, the way communities, schools, and the prison system perpetuate racism, and the cost of Black female defiance.

Simone Atangana Bekono studied creative writing at the ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem. Her debut poetry collection, how the first sparks became visible, was awarded the Poëziedebuutprijs Aan Zee for best first book of poetry. She lives in Amsterdam. Suzanne Heukensfeldt Jansen is a bilingual freelance translator, focusing on literary fiction and nonfiction. She obtained her postgraduate certificate in literary translation from University College. She lives in London.