Kandé, Sylvie: The Neverending Quest for the Other Shore: An Epic in Three Cantos / La quête infinie de l'autre rive: Épopée en trois chants

English translation by Alexander Dickow (Wesleyan University Press, paperback) Publication Date: March 8, 2022 Publisher Marketing: In Kandé's epic poem, African history collides with the contemporary reality of migrationSylvie Kandé's neo-epic in three cantos is a double narrative combining today's tales of African migration to Europe on the one hand, with the legend of Abubakar II on the other: Abubakar, emperor of 14th-Century Mali, sailed West toward the new world, never to return. Kandé's language deftly weaves a dialogue between these two narratives and between the epic traditions of the globe. Dazzling in its scope, the poem swings between epic stylization, griot storytelling, and colloquial banter, capturing an astonishing range of human experience. Kandé makes of the migrant a new hero, a future hero whose destiny has not yet taken shape, whose stories are still waiting to be told in their fullness and grandeur: the neverending quest has only just begun.Country folk who made