Antoinette Tidjani-Alou
“Tidjani Alou’s writing sketches the commonplace and the metaphysical, with heft, honesty, and audacity. The range is compelling, as she takes us through lives in places as diverse as Accra and Niamey. The prose is deft, her metaphors sting with accuracy. This is a writer to think and feel with.” – Emmanuel Iduma, editor, Saraba Magazine.
A grandmother with a food-induced encounter, an ecclesial romance with a tomcat set in the throes of uncertain times, eating and drinking for freedom, wife battery under the watchful eyes of communal love, desperately seeking lovers burdened by violent pasts, and a woman taking liberty after nine children with nine husbands are some of the characters and stories in Antoinette Tidjani Alou’s debut fiction collection.
In fifteen formidable lyrical prose, Tina Shot Me Between the Eyes explores how the self is shaped and transformed by the knots we yearn to tie around ourselves: familial, spousal, parental, and societal. It tackles how we struggle in relationships for nourishment and fulfilment, and how connections could kill us and how we could kill to survive – a potent force for understanding humanity and the nuances of acts of violence, tolerance, faith and love.
Author Details
Antoinette Tidjani Alou did her undergraduate studies at the University of the West Indies (Mona Campus, Kingston) and her postgraduate studies at the University of Bordeaux (France). She is a Professor of French and Comparative Literature and Director of the Arts and Culture Programme at the Université Abdou Moumouni de Niamey, in Niger where she has lived for more than two decades. An independent translator, she has published several articles and books. Writing in both French and in English, covering lifewriting, poetry and short stories.
Review: Vignettes on our lives and dreams by Theresa Mallinson, Mail and Guardian, 2 August 2019.
Interview: Audrey Chin “Writers I Read: In Conversation with Antoinette Tidjani Alou”, 23 August 2021.
ISBNs: 9782359260724 PB 9782359260731 Ebook
Extent: 144 pp 140 x 216 mm
Price: $16.95 • £12.95 • €15.50 • CFA7500
Release Date: November 2017