First AmazonCrossing Title: King of Kahel

Earlier this year, Amazon made headlines with its new AmazonCrossing venture, essentially the bookseller’s foray into publishing translated fiction.

I’ve just received an advance copy of the first book to come out of this new imprint, The King of Kahel by Tierno Monénembo. It appears to be a serious and interesting work. Here’s the description:

Tierno Monenembo’s The King of Kahel was originally published in France in 2008 and was the winner of the French literary prize, the prix Renaudot, which is awarded to the author of an outstanding original novel. Loosely based on the life of Olivier de Sanderval, a man who journeyed to Guinea to build an empire by conquering the hostile region of Fouta Djallon, the book exposes how Sanderval braves all dangers to build a railway that will bring modern civilization to Africa.

There’s an interview with translator Nicholas Elliott on the book’s Amazon page. Monénembo’s Wikipedia page doesn’t offer a whole lot of information, though it does note that he was “one of the African authors invited to Rwanda after the 1994 Tutsi-Hutu massacre to ‘write genocide into memory.’”

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