I’m thrilled to announce the release of my latest book, Sister Deborah, now available from my U.S. publisher, Archipelago Books. Beautifully translated from French to English by Mark Polizzotti, this novel is finally accessible to English-speaking readers.
My heartfelt thanks to Jill Schoolman and the entire team at Archipelago Books for their dedicated work. ❤️
In Sister Deborah, when time-worn ancestral remedies fail to heal young Ikirezi’s ailments, she is taken to the Rwandan hillsides, where health blooms under Sister Deborah’s hands as she sits beneath a coral tree. As women bare their breasts to the rising sun, men under thatched roofs stand “stunned and impotent before this female fury.” Years later, Ikirezi, now grown, unearths the mystery of Sister Deborah’s journey from America to 1930s Rwanda and the secrets surrounding her sudden departure, encountering colonial records that label Sister Deborah as a “pathogen,” an “incident.”
Through Ikirezi’s search, the novel asks: Who holds the truth? Who stands at the threshold of memory? Sister Deborah moves within the slippages of history to tell a profound story of what happens when women—especially Black women and girls—seek the truth against all odds. It is a journey of remembrance, breathing life back into what has been forgotten.
Thank you all for your support, and happy reading!
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