The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi
ABOUT
THE BOOK
In 1837, two young African princes arrive in Holland. At the invitation of Dutch emissaries to West Africa, the king of the Ashanti has sent his son and nephew to receive the blessings of a European education. But unbeknownst to the king, the boys are to become pawns on the brutal game of the illicit slave trade. As they enter a dreamlike, sometimes violent, altogether bewildering world, moving from a Dutch boarding school and its terrors to the Dutch royal court, their common experience will pull the once inseparable cousins onto divergent paths. For the one called Kwame, the new life will be his undoing. Enlisted in the Dutch colonial army, he will return to the land of his ancestors to face a truth that will destroy him. But Kwasi will awaken more slowly, spending a lifetime convinced he has found a place in a world not his own. Only in the year 1900, reconstructing his past through an intricate series of flashbacks as his light begins to fade on a barren coffee plantation in Indonesia, will he discover the extent of his self-deceptions.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Ina
Rilke
Ina Rilke is a Mozambique-born translator who specializes in translating Dutch literature and French literature into English.
Born in Mozambique, she went to school in Porto in Portugal, attending Oporto British School. She studied translation at the University of Amsterdam, where she later taught.
Writers she has translated include Hafid Bouazza, Louis Couperus, Hella Haasse, W. F. Hermans, Arthur Japin, Erwin Mortier, Multatuli, Cees Nooteboom, Connie Palmen, Pierre Péju and Dai Sijie. Rilke has won the Vondel Prize, the Scott Moncrieff Prize and the Flemish Culture Prize. She has also been nominated for the Best Translated Book Award, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and the IMPAC Book Award.
Ina Rilke is a Mozambique-born translator who specializes in translating Dutch literature and French literature into English.
Born in Mozambique, she went to school in Porto in Portugal, attending Oporto British School. She studied translation at the University of Amsterdam, where she later taught.
Writers she has translated include Hafid Bouazza, Louis Couperus, Hella Haasse, W. F. Hermans, Arthur Japin, Erwin Mortier, Multatuli, Cees Nooteboom, Connie Palmen, Pierre Péju and Dai Sijie. Rilke has won the Vondel Prize, the Scott Moncrieff Prize and the Flemish Culture Prize. She has also been nominated for the Best Translated Book Award, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and the IMPAC Book Award.