Precipice

written by Susan Nkwentie Nde

Madam Essin stood watching the young people holding each other. She looked at the young man who was her son. How handsome he looked. When he smiled he had that elusive curve on his lips that reminded her of her husband. She had been unable to resist that curve of the lips even after eight years of marriage. When her husband smiled she had the feeling he was looking down on her in amused condescension. This used to annoy her but she could not resist the charm he exuded. Now here she was an abandoned wife with an estranged son. Her thoughts roved as she watched them, plunging into the past, the present and the future. The girl brought back the past. She wished she could obliterate that past from her life and her son’s. In {Precipice}, Susan Nkwentie Nde, in her first novel, has a way of weaving past intrigues and present emotions to keep all guessing about what will be. She opens up her characters for the reader to enter and inhabit their minds and bodies in a compelling story of love and estrangement, happy accidents, quest and survival.

Susan Nkwentie Nde

Susan Nkwentie Nde was born in 1960 in Ndop in the Northwest Province of Cameroon. After attending Our Lady of Lourdes Secondary School in Bamenda, and the Cameroon College of Arts, Science and Technology in Bambili, she graduated from the Teachers Training Colleges (ENS) of Bambili and Yaounde. She took courses at the universities of Yaounde and Buea and earned a Masters degree in African Literature, specializing in African Poetry. She has taught English and Literature for the past 23 years and currently teaches at the Bilingual Grammar School in Buea, Cameroon. Her poems, articles, and stories have appeared in various journals, newspapers and magazines.