The latest addition to my website is Charly Mbock‘s Quand saigne le palmier [When the Palm Tree Bleeds]. Mbock, a Cameroonian academic and administrator, has also written three novels, of which this is the first. It tells of an African village, in the past, where the chief is impotent and therefore cannot produce an heir, a terrible misfortune. Despite help from a friend, first by finding a healer who will cure his impotence and then, when his impotence is cured but he remains infertile, standing in for him, things go drastically wrong, as the heir does not look like the chief but the friend. The chief is an absolute chief and he abuses his position of power to take revenge on those who mocked him, his wife who he feels betrayed him and the friend who helped him. It is a sad tale of abuse of power and loss of power.