In the Company of Men

by Veronique Tadjo

Jacana

This is such a powerful little book.  Its only 124 pages but it packs such a punch.  It’s also unlike anything else you’ve read.  It’s a fable about the Ebola epidemic, written in the style of African oral traditions, in which everyone has a voice from the most senior government minister to the lowly bat; the hard-working medical staff to the grandmother who adopts an orphan; the student turned gravedigger to the grieving lover.  And it’s all beautifully and lyrically overseen by the wise old Baobab tree who mourns the state of the earth while providing hope for the future. Part fable, part documentary, part environmental contemplation, part dialogue, part social commentary, part medical observation, part reflection on humanity’s place in the world, In the Company of Men is a book about the strength and the fragility of life but most of all, it’s about the courage of ordinary people  It’s heartbreaking and challenging and utterly extraordinary.

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction 2022

This novel, elegiac and sorrowful, is also an affirmation of the cycle of life and nature’s important place in it. – Maaza Mangiste, author of The Shadow King

an all-too-resonant parable for our time. – Harper’s Bazaar

Resonant, unflinching…As personal and humane as it is biblically grand…a timely testament to the destructive powers of pandemics. – Publishers Weekly

[A] powerful, poetic ode to life in a country of ancient customs, ravaged by death…A magnificent and essential text. – Le Figaro Madame