Gabons first female novelist, Angle Rawiri probed deeper intothe issues that writers a generation before herMariama B and Aminata Sow Fallhadbegun to address. Translated by Sara Hanaburgh, this third novel of the three Rawiri published isconsidered the richest of her fictional prose. It offers a gripping account of a modern woman,Emilienne, who questions traditional values and seeks emancipation fromthem.

Emiliennes active search for feminism on her own terms is tangled up withcultural expectations and taboos of motherhood, marriage, polygamy, divorce, and passion. Shecompletes her university studies in Paris, marries a man from another ethnic group, becomes a leaderin womens liberation, enjoys professional success, even earning more than her husband, andeventually takes a female lover. Yet still she remains unsatisfied. Those closest to her, and evenshe herself, constantly question her role as woman, wife, mother, and lover. The tragic death of heronly childher daughter Rkiaaccentuates Emiliennes anguish, all the moreso because of her subsequent barrenness and the pressure that she concede to her husbandstaking a second wife.

In her forceful portrayal of one womans life in CentralAfrica in the late 1980s, Rawiri prompts us not only to reconsider our notions of African feminismand the canon of francophone African womens writing but also to expand our awareness of theissues women face across the world today in the workforce, in the bedroom, and among family andpeers.