- Book Topics
- Africa
- Women laborers
- Congo
- Democratic Republic of Congo
- Mobutu Sese Seko
- Laurent Kabila
- PEN International
- Philip Roth
- AIDS
- African literature
- francophone Africa
The Stone Breakers
THE STONE BREAKERS, set in an imagined contemporary African country, is a gripping novel told from a unique second person point-of-view of the uprising of a group of women stone crushers at a gravel pit, who rise up against their corporate bosses to demand higher wages for their labor–a grueling process of breaking rocks down to gravel-sized bits to be used as road surfacing for the expansion of the country’s airport. What begins as a village protest escalates to a state-wide rebellion that confronts the corrupt leadership and challenges the status quo set by the government and the mining corporations.
First published in 2010, this classic novel of labor resistance, is published for the first time in the English language, will draw comparisons to the works of Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri and Imbolo Mbue.
Emmanuel Dongala is the 2023 winner of the (25,000 Euro) Grand Prix Hervé Deluen from L’Académie française, awarded in June for contributing to the promotion of French as an international language.
- Book Topics
- Africa
- Women laborers
- Congo
- Democratic Republic of Congo
- Mobutu Sese Seko
- Laurent Kabila
- PEN International
- Philip Roth
- AIDS
- African literature
- francophone Africa
Reviews and Comments
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Reading The Stone Breakers against the backdrop of both new and ongoing strikes makes Dongala’s novel feel especially relevant right now.
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One of [Republic of the Congo’s] best known novelists. His books have criticized, even mocked, the corruption in his country’s government.
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Dongala may be the most accomplished novelist from Africa since Chinua Achebe.
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Translated with comforting verve by Sara Hanaburgh, The Stone Breakers is a crowd-pleasing homage to feminist resistance…Dongala sympathetically chronicles their efforts to be paid fairly and treated with respect.
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Even though many of the details of their experiences are grim, this is ultimately a feel-good novel and a powerful story—one that the minister of women’s affairs in the novel, and anyone who claims to advocate for women, would do well to read.
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