a sorrow and a worry,

a wave on Facebook

and a question as to whether it was perhaps more painful than good to know you.

She is a student working on a project on the conditions in Congolese mines. He works in just such a mine. One summer, he comes to Norway in connection with the project. They become friends without speaking the same language, through an interpreter.

He returns home, telling her through Google Translate about sleeping in the mine, about people dying in the mine, about his strong desire to be educated. She has a good idea: if they write a book together, he’ll get money for an education, and she’ll help him get a place on a programme of study in Norway. It becomes much more difficult and painful than they could have anticipated.

This novel has a very unusual format, written by Sunniva M. Roligheten and Daniel Akilimali Wilondja, in Norwegian, French and Swahili, a lot of it with help from Google Translate. The book is political, poetic, funny and very sad.