By Night the Mountain Burns
SynopsisPlot
This novel tells of childhood on a remote island off the west African coast. Superstition dominates in dark times and the hard-pressed islanders sacrifice their possessions to the enraged ocean. What of their lives will they save? Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel was born in 1966 in Equatorial Guinea. By Night the Mountain Burns is based on his memories of growing up on the remote Annobón Island. He made headlines in 2011 by embarking on a hunger strike in an anti-government protest.
Story
About this book
By Night the Mountain Burns is a novel by Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel, born in 1966 in Equatorial Guinea. It draws on his memories of growing up on Annobón, a small island in the Gulf of Guinea off the west African coast. The child narrator lives with his grandfather, several mothers and no fathers, and tells his story in the manner of oral storytelling.
The island passes through a dark chapter of its history. A bush fire destroys the crops, and a cholera outbreak then kills hundreds of people. Superstition dominates the response. The islanders give up their possessions to an ocean god they believe is enraged, hoping the sacrifice will settle it, while the boy tries to understand a world shaped by scarcity and belief.
Ávila Laurel writes in Spanish, the official language of Equatorial Guinea, and is among the few writers from the country whose work reaches readers abroad. Annobón itself lies far out in the Atlantic, closer to São Tomé than to the African mainland. In 2011 he drew wide attention by beginning a hunger strike as part of an anti-government protest.
