The Lives and Deaths of Véronique Bangoura

Two strangers meet in Paris and share their stories of exile in the engrossing latest from Guinean writer Monénembo (The King of Kahel). It’s 2012 when Guinean healthcare worker Véronique Bangoura is approached on the street by Frenchwoman Mathilde Corre, after she hears Véronique speaking in an unspecified Guinean language on the phone. Mathilde asks Véronique to share her life story, which begins in Conakry at age 15, when she is known as Atou and has just killed her policeman father, who raped her. Atou, a fugitive, is taken in by a girl her age named Diaraye and Diaraye’s aunt. Over the years that the three women live together, Atou is stalked by a man they call “Indigo Bomber,” who finally informs Atou that her real name is Véronique Bangoura and her birth parents were executed by the Ahmed Sékou Touré regime when she was an infant. As Véronique recounts these events, Mathilde reveals that she, too, has a painful connection to the Sékou Touré dictatorship, which executed her Guinean husband and kidnapped her mixed-race son. The author builds intrigue as he gradually reveals Mathilde’s motivation for befriending Véronique and the relationship between the two women deepens. It’s an alluring account of two lives swept up in history. (Mar.)