Scale Boy: An African Childhood

Patrice Nganang

Book cover for Scale Boy: An African Childhood
Image for variant 9780374614515
Book cover for Scale Boy: An African Childhood
Image for variant 9780374614515

Scale Boy: An African Childhood

Scale Boy: An African Childhood

Patrice Nganang

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Description

An extraordinary chronicle of youth that evokes the paradoxes of modern Africa--complex, contradictory, and full of conflict, tragedy, and joy.

Patrice Nganang, the acclaimed author of Dog Days, Mount Pleasant, and, most recently, A Trail of Crab Tracks, which was a 2022 New Yorker Book of the Year, writes about his vibrant, animated youth in Cameroon, a period of upheaval and change in the country's history and in his life.

Scale Boy is a memoir that brings great brightness and joy to the tumultuous years of discovering oneself and one's community; though there are moments of danger and confusion in his story, Nganang aims to present a new vision of a young Black African man's coming-of-age.

About the Author

Patrice Nganang was born in Cameroon and is a novelist, poet, and essayist. His novel Dog Days received the Prix Marguerite Yourcenar and the Grand Prix littéraire de Afrique noire. He is also the author of Mount Pleasant (FSG, 2016), When the Plums Are Ripe (FSG, 2019), and A Trail of Crab Tracks (FSG, 2022). He teaches comparative literature at Stony Brook University.

Critical Reviews

"Scale Boy is much more than a portrait of an African childhood. It portrays the cultural and linguistic complexity of the nation with wit and humor. Nganang's account of colonial machinations and oppressions is appropriately stern and unsparing." --Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature

"An elegant, closely observed memoir of challenges overcome on the path to becoming a writer." --Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"[A] gorgeous memoir. . . This elegant portrayal of finding grace and beauty amid upheaval will captivate readers." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Publishing Information

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub date: 2026-01-20
Length: 464 pages

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