Scale Boy
An African Childhood
$72.02
- Hardcover
464 pages
- Release Date
28 April 2026
Summary
Patrice Nganang, the acclaimed author of Dog Days, Mount Pleasant, and A Trail of Crab Tracks (a 2022 New Yorker Book of the Year), writes about his vibrant, animated youth in Cameroon, a period of upheaval and change in the country’s history and in his life.
Scale Boy is a memoir that brings great brightness and joy to the tumultuous years of discovering oneself and one’s community. Though there are moments of danger and confusion in his s…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780374614515 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0374614512 |
| Author: | Patrice Nganang |
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc |
| Imprint: | Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc |
| Format: | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages: | 464 |
| Release Date: | 28 April 2026 |
| Weight: | 628g |
| Dimensions: | 37mm x 158mm x 235mm |
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Critics Review
“In this unhurried, lyrical memoir, a novelist remembers his youth in Cameroon in the nineteen-seventies and eighties. Anchored by Nganang’s years as a ‘scale boy’–weighing people and products for a small fee–the narrative wends through anecdotes that depict a young man discovering his artistic and intellectual powers along with his nation’s colonial history.”
–The New Yorker
“Scale Boy is much more than a portrait of an African childhood. It portrays the cultural and linguistic complexity of the nation with wit and humor. Nganang’s account of colonial machinations and oppressions is appropriately stern and unsparing.”
–Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
“An elegant, closely observed memoir of challenges overcome on the path to becoming a writer.”
–Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
”[A] gorgeous memoir … This elegant portrayal of finding grace and beauty amid upheaval will captivate readers.”
–Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Patrice Nganang
Patrice Nganang was born in Cameroon and is a novelist, a poet, and an essayist. His novel Dog Days received the Prix Marguerite Yourcenar and the Grand Prix littéraire d’Afrique noire. He is also the author of Mount Pleasant (FSG, 2016), When the Plums Are Ripe (FSG, 2019), and A Trail of Crab Tracks (FSG, 2022). He teaches comparative literature at Stony Brook University in New York.
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