Your Name Shall Be Tanga by Calixthe Beyala. Portsmouth. 1996. Heinemann. 0435909509. Translated from the French by Marjolijn de Jager. African Writers Series. 137 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Jane Human.  

DESCRIPTION - In a West-African prison cell a young woman, Tanga, is dying. Her only companion is Anna-Claude, a foreigner on the brink of madness. Reluctantly, Tanga begins to confide her life story to this stranger. A grim talc of incest, prostitution, bereavement and crime unfolds. Tanga's anguished mind searches for the words to express such suffering. Yet as she does so, the bond between her and the white stranger begins to grow. In passing on her story, she is fusing her identity with the woman who will live after her death. `Your name shall be Tanga', she insists. In this disturbing novel about sexual abuse and violence, Calixthe Beyala voices the solidarity that unites women across racial, religious and class barriers.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Calixthe Beyala was born in Cameroon in 1961. She spent her childhood in Douala with one of her sisters, four years older than herself. Calixthe Beyala left Cameroon aged seventeen and arrived in France where she studied, married, had two children and published numerous novels. In 1996 she was awarded the Grand Prix du Roman de l'AcadEmie Française. She now (2011) lives in France.

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