Books from Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)

In As the Crow Flies, Véronique Tadjo creates a lyrical, fragmented portrait of human life through a series of interconnected stories, reflections, and poetic vignettes. Rather than following a single plot, the book moves between different voices and experiences, exploring how people meet, fall in love, suffer, separate, and continue searching for meaning. Its characters are often anonymous, representing lives that might otherwise go unnoticed. Through intimate observations, allegories, everyday encounters, and references to ancestral myths, Tadjo reflects on desire, loneliness, loss, and the fragile connections that bind people together. The narrative moves freely across emotional and geographical boundaries, suggesting that individual lives are never entirely separate but continually intersect and influence one another. Blending prose and poetry, the book challenges conventional storytelling, embracing the uncertainty and complexity of human experience. Its central message is that life rarely follows a neat, predictable path: relationships change, people drift apart, and destinies remain unresolved. Like a crow flying across an open landscape, the narrative follows the unpredictable routes through which love and human connection unfold.