Bøker av Astrid Roemer

In 1966 Suriname, the Vanta family, an intricate blend of Creole, Maroon, French, Indian, Indigenous, British, and Jewish heritage, is led by Grandma Bee, a proud, cigar-smoking matriarch facing her final days. As she reflects on her scattered family and the loss of her favourite granddaughter, Heli, exiled to the Netherlands for an affair with her white teacher, Bee grapples with one question: What truly binds a family? Off-White offers a moving exploration of Bee's legacy amid themes of male violence, colonialism, and the dismantling of racial identity, marking the return of a celebrated Surinamese author after two decades.

On a Woman's Madness tells the story of Noenka, a courageous Black woman trying to live a life of her own choosing. When her abusive husband of just nine days refuses her request for divorce, Noenka flees her hometown in Suriname, on South America's tropical northeastern coast, for the capital city of Paramaribo. Unsettled and unsupported, her life in this new place is illuminated by romance and new freedoms, but also forever haunted by her past and society's expectations. Strikingly translated by Lucy Scott, Astrid Roemer's classic queer novel is a tentpole of European and post-colonial literature. And amid tales of plantation-dwelling snakes, rare orchids, and star-crossed lovers, it is also a blistering meditation on the cruelties we inflict on those who disobey. Roemer, the first Surinamese winner of the prestigious Dutch Literature Prize, carves out postcolonial Suriname in barbed, resonant fragments. Who is Noenka? Roemer asks us. "I'm Noenka," she responds resolutely, "which means Never Again."