Novel
The hero of this novel, Aimé Billion, is a real outsider who feels as a stranger not only in Africa or Europe, but even in his own body. Of Yoruba, Vietnamese and French descent, he is considered a white man by Africans, and an African by white people. Aimé spends the first thirty-eight years of his life in Benin, where he works as a nursing assistant. He then moves to Norway, a country where even neighbours are strangers to each other. Yet it is there that he finds happiness in an extraordinary love relationship. From traditional voodoo practices to the intricacies of life in the most affluent welfare society, Aimé charts everything with the same affability and curiosity. Happy North is a novel in which magic realism meets ‘plain’ realism to bring strange worlds to the reader and make them heart-achingly familiar.
A beautiful tale on being a stranger and finding a home
Winner of the Aegon Award 2014 for outstanding literary achievement
Product details
ISBN 978 963 1431 23 0
2013, hard cover with jacket
440 pages, 140×215 mm
3490 HUF
Rights sold
French, Viviane Hamy
Czech, Volvox Globátor
Turkish, Alak arga
Serbian, Dereta
Spanish, Tropo Editores
Latvian, Mansards
English, German and Norwegian excerpts and complete French text available
Magvető Rights 
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