Patrick Colm Hogan, "A People Without Shame" (Blackwater Press, 2024)

New Books Network

Somota is society divided by change, and by memories. When A. arrives in the protectorate shortly after the first world war, he is unsure of what to expect. Employed by the government as a linguistic anthropologist, he is tasked with documenting the benefits of the new order and reporting them to the Reverend G. But what are these benefits? In his travels throughout the region, A. finds only the physical and emotional scars of conquest, and of routine colonial administration. Yet, even as the indigenous culture is being reduced to mere fragments, he also learns of a sublime literature responding to those historical traumas. One storyteller in particular, Kehinta, begins to reveal to A. just how much has been lost. A People Without Shame (Blackwater Press, 2024) is a profoundly beautiful novel commenting on the horrors of colonial oppression, trauma, love, and the power of story.

Patrick Colm Hogan is the author of The Death of the Goddess: A Poem in Twelve Cantos (2014), a book-length, narrative poem based on Hindu Goddess myths, as well as lyric poems and short fiction, published in such outlets as minnesota review, The Journal of Irish Literature, and the Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies. A Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the University of Connecticut, he is the author of over twenty scholarly and interpretive books, most of which treat postcolonial or world literature. Hogan regularly teaches courses in postcolonial literature (often with a focus on Africa), as well as courses on the pre-colonial and postcolonial literary traditions of India and China. In keeping with these interests, he has worked to acquire at least some knowledge of French, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Hindi, Mandarin, and Sanskrit. A People Without Shame is his first novel.

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