THE AQUATICS, brutal violence is, always has been, the world's norm for Others

THE AQUATICS
OSVALDE LEWAT (tr. Maren Baudet-Lackner)
Coffee House Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.00 all editions, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An extraordinary novel of loyalty, strife, and empowerment from Peabody Award-winning Cameroonian filmmaker Osvalde Lewat.

In the fictional African country of Zambuena, Katmé Abbia enjoys a life of privilege and influence married to Tashun, the powerful prefect of Zambuena's capital. Yet after years spent playing the obedient, demure wife to a husband who has ceased to notice her, Katmé grows increasingly restless. Her one source of connection is Samy, a childhood friend, struggling artist, and gay man—an offense punishable by law in Zambuena. When Katmé discovers that Samy’s new exhibition, funded by herself and Tashun, boldly critiques Zambuena's social and economic inequities, her public, married life is set on a collision course with her one true friendship. As social pressures and political rivals sow life-threatening consequences, Katmé faces an agonizing choice: abandon her friend or destroy her family.

Mixing compassion with clear-eyed fury and a keen sense of the absurd, The Aquatics confronts one of contemporary Africa’s most entrenched societal issues in a story as immersive and inevitable as a quickly rising tide.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Misogyny, homophobia, and christian fundamentalism all travel in one ugly pack, like the social hyenas they are. Cruelly tormenting those they Other while standing in staunch defense of "their own"...so long as those under their control do not act up, resist, or question the leadership's order.

Katmé is that one inside the pack's protection...until she isn't. Her ephemeral status as an insider comes to an end when her true friend, only friend, queer artist Samy attracts her husband's political enemies' attention. She's accustomed to the misogyny, the indifference, even the beatings, as a price to be paid for her "comfortable" lifestyle. In a country viewed internationally as poor in service of its people's rights...read the wiki article, this is only barely a novel...it's not in the least surprising that Katmé is placed in the horrifying position she is. Her life is in danger if she continues to support Samy, her queer friend...his life is in danger because he refuses to accept being second-class, not good enough...and the culture's overlords are fighting over political crap having nothing to do with Samy or Katmé, but they pay the price. I'm reminded of the proverb "when elephants fight, the grass suffers," as an apt summation of this novel's central conceit.

The content warnings are serious, please heed them. Domestic violence is sadly not uncommon anywhere. It is just part of the landscape in Author Lewat's story. I was appalled at the casual tone of the prison rape Samy endures, at the beatings Katmé receives from her husband, from the pervasive sense that none of this would raise a single Cameroonian eyebrow. (Yes, we're calling it by a made-up name, but no one's fooled. It's like Peyton Placewas in the 1950s, a figleaf meant to make reprisals an admission of guilt.) This is a tough novel, meant to be hard to swallow, even hard to chew. It does a great service, one fiction might be the only thing that can do it, of showing Society its own ass in a mirror of gigantic proportions.

The lives of these characters, these people, are appalling. They are a shriek of outrage that the world just looks away; they are a warning lest others succumb to the easeful abdication of morality to those who know nothing of it.

A novel that arrives as a bitter gift in time for all the religious holidays.