Cotton Blues

Translated from French by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott.

In an African town somewhere between the Sahel and the Atlantic coast, cotton planter Toby Kunta takes a Berlin journalist hostage in a museum showroom. Kunta asks for monetary compensation for himself and a group of peasants ruined by the production of genetically modified cotton. As the tension rises inside the museum and a standoff begins with the chief of police, Kunta begins to burn the exhibited works one by one and threatens to do the same with his prisoner.

With this standoff behind closed doors, where words and gestures get exchanged with anger and hope, Edem Awumey takes us on a contemporary journey on the cotton road, from the African Savannah to the American South, from the luxurious salons of Berlin to the fields of Indian Rajasthan sprayed with glyphosate, from the valleys of Uzbekistan covered with white fibre to the spinning mills of Dhaka in Bangladesh. Cotton Blues is a novel of the crossing of worlds in a struggle against the global domination of the multinationals. It is the great lamentation of the African people enslaved by the Western world's thirst for wealth. It is a cry for freedom too long held back that finally bursts out with thunderous violence.

Edem Awumey was born in Lomé, Togo. He is the author of five previous novels. Descent into Night, the English translation of Explication de la nuit (2013), won the prestigious Governor General's Literary Award for Translation in 2018. His other novels are Port-Melo (2006), which won the Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire; Les pieds sales (2009), which was a finalist for the Prix Goncourt in France; Rose déluge (2011); and Mina parmi les ombres (2018), which was translated into English as Mina Among the Shadows (2020). Dirty Feet (2011), the English translation of Les pieds sales, was selected for the Dublin Impac Award. Descent into Night and Mina Among the Shadows were translated by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott. Edem Awumey lives in Gatineau, Quebec.