A powerful heartrending and insightful novel of a trio of women in Cameroon who dare to rebel
against oppressive long-held cultural traditions?including polygamy and domestic abuse?that
define and limit their lives. Three women three stories three linked destinies . . . In North
Cameroon well-to-do young Ramla is torn from her true love and wed to a manipulative older
man. Safira her co-wife juggles envy and empathy for this new bride with disappointment in
the husband she desperately loves. Like her older sister Ramla Hindou is married off to a man
she does not know or want a distant cousin whose instability and violence terrifies her. From
an early age these women were raised to submit to men or risk shame and repudiation of
themselves and their families. They are advised to have munyal?patience. They are told that
their fates are the will of the All-Powerful and that it is unthinkable?or rather
impossible?to defy tradition. They are reminded of the Fulani proverb which holds ?At the end
of patience there is the sky.? Yet Ramla Safira and Hindou are tired of waiting for a
happiness that may never come. Their lives are driven by impatience and clouded by the
suffering rooted in forced marriage and physical abuse but it is this oppressive culture that
binds them together. In a society that demands female obedience how will these three impatient
women free themselves? Djaïli Amadou Amal makes her literary debut in English with this
remarkable novel that breaks taboos as it denounces the cultural mores of Africa's Sahel
region. Inspired by the author's own experiences and written with grace strength and veracity
The Impatient is a moving testimony to a shared pain and a call for change?an unflinching
depiction of the psychic damage traditions can have on the women who must abide by them and a
denunciation of violence against all women and the normalization of domestic abuse?not only in
Cameroon but around the globe. Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan
