Description
International Booker-nominated satirist GauZ’ returns with a panoramic journey into the colonization of the African interior.
Mourning the recent deaths of his parents, a young white man in nineteenth-century France joins a colonial expedition attempting to establish trading routes on the Ivory Coast an finds himself caught between factions who disagree on everything—except their shared loathing of the British.
A century later, a young Black boy born in Amsterdam gives his account, complete with youthful malapropisms, of his own voyage to the Ivory Coast, and his upbringing by his father, Comrade Papa, who teaches him to always fight “the yolk of capitalism.”
In exuberant, ingenious prose, GauZ’ superimposes their intertwined stories, looking across centuries and continents to reveal the long arc of African colonization.
Praise for Standing Heavy
“This book is about the anti-flâneurs: not the rich white men who roam the boulevards of Paris but poorly paid Black men whose jobs require them to stand still. As a security guard, the protagonist of Standing Heavy is invisible but sees everything. Told in a fragmentary style—as if from different camera angles—this is the story of colonialism and consumerism, of the specifics of power, and of the hope of the sixties diminishing as society turns cynical and corrupt.”
—International Booker Prize Judges’ citation
“This shrewd, episodic novel stars the security guards of Paris . . . undocumented Ivoirian immigrants whose watchful eyes examine Parisian turmoil over two generations.”
—New York Times
“A spry volume of 167 pages . . . that manages to trade heavily in politics while also sneaking up on your sympathy. I won’t spoil the end, but it startled me in its poignancy.”
—The Walrus
“A cunning observer and a disenchanted protestor, GauZ’ makes shopping an ethnological mine, a priceless sketch and a combat sport.”
—Elle
“This compact, humane satire, deftly translated by Frank Wynne, entertains as much as it informs.”
—Lucy Popescu, Financial Times
