An American evangelical mission bursts into the heart of a Rwandan village already dedicated to the worship of the Virgin Mary and a great figure, Nyabinghi.
What if Chief Musoni married Sister Deborah, this American priestess and miracle worker who seduces crowds, in order to establish his authority?
When the latter declines, it is humiliation, soon fueled by the announcement that the long-awaited messiah will be a woman who will liberate all the others.
Winner of the Renaudot Prize in 2012 for “Our Lady of the Nile”, the author Scholastique Mukasonga offers in her new novel “Sister Deborah”, a dive as mysterious as it is arid into colonial Rwanda in the 1930s.
Scholastique Mukasonga looks back at the history of conversion to Christianity in East Africa, but starting from the figure of the prophetess and miracle worker Sister Deborah.
Scholastique Mukasonga distils throughout her choral novel a rather burlesque tone which can both disconcert and seduce the reader.
Scholastique Mukasonga offers the latter, who will certainly have to make a little effort to enter the author’s unique universe, a picaresque and almost bitter journey to the heart of an African society torn between mystification and demystification.
Carried by the undeniable storytelling talent of the Rwandan novelist, all suggestion and mystery, Sister Deborah probes the consequences of the arrival of a religion in a society which so needs hope.
Published by Folio since June 13, 2024
