Osvalde Lewat The Aquatics review and information of the content of the first novel by the filmmaker and writer from Cameroon. Coffee House Press will publish the English translation of Les aquatiques, the Osvalde Lewat novel, on December 2, 2025.
Osvalde Lewat The Aquatics review
- “Osvalde Lewat’s visual writing captures the heroine’s dilemma, following her thoughts and gestures as if in close-up.” (Le Monde)
- “Osvalde Lewat made a name for herself as a filmmaker through documentaries, but The Aquatics is her first novel. It is hard to believe, as this book is masterful. Everything rings true: the tone, the style, the life details, the many characters, all complex even when cartoonish.” (Michel Zink, French Academy)
- “Osvalde Lewat enters literature with this first novel of remarkable vivacity.” (Le Point)
- “A modern tragedy in which everything sounds true.” (Le Soir)
The Aquatics
- Author: Osvalde Lewat (Cameroon)
- Book type: Cameroonian novel
- Original: Les aquatiques (2021)
- English translation: Maren Baudet-Lackner
- Publisher: Coffee House Press
- Released: 2 December 2025
- Length: 248 pages
- Format: paperback
- Prize: € 15,95
- Order book from: Amazon
Blurb of the first novel by Osvalde Lewat
An extraordinary novel of loyalty, strife, and empowerment from Peabody Award-winning Cameroonian filmmaker Osvalde Lewat.
In the fictional African country of Zambuena, Katmé Abbia enjoys a life of privilege and influence married to Tashun, the powerful prefect of Zambuena’s capital. Yet after years spent playing the obedient, demure wife to a husband who has ceased to notice her, Katmé grows increasingly restless. Her one source of connection is Samy, a childhood friend, struggling artist, and gay man—an offense punishable by law in Zambuena. When Katmé discovers that Samy’s new exhibition, funded by herself and Tashun, boldly critiques Zambuena’s inequities, her public, married life is set on a collision course with her one true friendship. Political rivals descend and threaten Samy with incarceration, forcing Katmé into an agonizing choice: abandon her friend or destroy her family.
Mixing compassion with clear-eyed fury and a keen sense of the absurd, The Aquatics confronts one of contemporary Africa’s most entrenched societal issues in a story as immersive and inevitable as a quickly rising tide.
Osvalde Lewat is born in 1977 in Garoua, Cameroon. Osvalde is a renowned documentary filmmaker whose work has been awarded the prestigious Peabody Award. Her debut novel, The Aquatics, won the Pan-African Prize for Literature, the French Academy Literature Prize, and the Kourouma Prize.