Et is unfortunately not uncommon to measure the quality of a novel by its content. This is especially true for crime novels, which play in a different league as soon as they can be declared a milieu study. Country and people mediated by murder and manslaughter? Many readers, reviewers and teachers would say that the end justifies the means. The keyword is: social relevance. Yasmin Angoe, the first-generation American from Ghana, has presented a thriller debut with “Echo of Violence” that could easily be assigned to this educational genre, although this mere classification, as much can be said, would not go far enough.
Nena Knight, the protagonist of the book, has to witness as a child how armed men invade her home village in Ghana. The leader of the gang has her tied to a tree and demands that her brothers rape her. bewilderment. Protest. So they are murdered. As a result, Nena’s father loses his head, first in a figurative sense, then actually. The other inhabitants must also die. Boundless excesses, sheer horror. But Yasmin Angoe is far from finished with her heroine. She is abducted, held captive in a camp and abused before being sold as a slave to a wealthy psychopath in Paris. There her ordeal goes into the next and once again bestial round.
The autonomy of artistic expression
Of course, it is natural to condemn the detailed description of such excessive barbarism. It is just as natural, however, to commend the author for tackling the dirty business of human trafficking and the oppression of African women, for making the main character a physically and mentally handicapped Ghanaian woman, for writing a trigger warning and emphasizing, her have devoted themselves to their material with “great sensitivity and respect”.
“Please contact one of the counseling services in your area if you need help,” it finally says. The matter of sensitivity is doubtful, because Yasmin Angoe prefers to let carnage be carnage and calmly spell out which part of the body will be perforated and how.
In fact, that’s not a flaw, because “Echo of Violence” doesn’t convince because of the content, but because of the form. The excesses are not just exaggerated, they are also described in an exaggerated manner, as if the author wanted to assure herself of the autonomy of the artistic expression. Violence is a stylistic criterion here, which so condensed undermines any effect of reality and makes one think of a comic world. That’s why Yasmin Angoe’s colleague SA Cosby feels reminded of “John Wick” when reading it. Anyone who expects plausible details from such a narrated world should not even pick up the book.
A revenge campaign not to be missed
Nena’s childhood and youth is told from the first-person perspective and in the present tense, so that the reader sees the world through her eyes: “I am a force of nature, a wild animal that does not let go of its prey.” What the adult woman experiences lays the author, on the other hand, is presented in the third person and in the past. In this way, there is no doubt about the protagonist’s abilities, which are on display in a way that is objective. Because now she works as a professional killer for the Tribe, a secret organization that works for the development of all African countries. The chairman of the group is Nena’s foster father, a likeable and sometimes ice-cold boy.
Part of the comic flair comes from playing with different identities. Nena was still called Aninyeh in Africa. When she kills people for the Tribe, her name is Echo. These versions of the same woman clash, blend, attract and repel: “Nena or Echo, Echo or Aninyeh. She had no idea who she would be.” What she has no hesitation in saying, though: “How can I explain the confidence that stopping someone from hurting me gives me?”
When she is ordered to kill a prosecutor in Miami to help out a new member of the tribe, she chooses to ignore the order. The newcomer to the secret society is one of those men who destroyed their home village and executed their family. This is the beginning of a revenge campaign that should not be missed.
Yasmin Angoe: “Echo of Violence”. Thriller. Translated from the English by Karin Diemerling. Edited by Thomas Wörtche. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2023. 424 p., br., €18.
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