The Aquatics

The Aquatics by Osvalde Lewat

What would you sacrifice to protect a friend when telling the truth could destroy your family?

The Aquatics by Osvalde Lewat is a gripping, award winning African novel about friendship, political repression and the devastating cost of silence.

In the fictional African country of Zambuena, Katmé Abbia enjoys a life of privilege as the wife of Tashun, a powerful prefect and rising political figure. From the outside, her life appears secure, respectable and enviable.

Behind that carefully maintained image, Katmé is increasingly restless. Her husband barely notices her, and the comfort surrounding her depends on compromises she can no longer ignore.

A friendship that threatens everything

Katmé’s closest friend is Samy, a struggling artist whose provocative work exposes the inequality, repression and violence hidden beneath Zambuena’s respectable public image.

Samy is also gay in a country where homosexuality is criminalised. When his latest exhibition attracts the attention of the authorities, his freedom and life are placed in immediate danger.

Katmé believes her husband’s influence can protect him. However, Samy’s arrest turns their private friendship into a political scandal that threatens Tashun’s ambitions and Katmé’s carefully protected life.

As pressure mounts, she faces an agonising choice: abandon the friend who truly knows her or risk losing her family, security and social position.

A powerful African political novel

The Aquatics explores how injustice survives through fear, respectability and deliberate silence. It asks whether comfort can ever be innocent when it depends on ignoring another person’s suffering.

With compassion, anger and a sharp sense of the absurd, Lewat presents a society in which appearances matter more than truth. Art becomes an act of resistance, friendship becomes dangerous and silence carries its own moral cost.

Katmé is neither a conventional hero nor a detached observer. Her fear, uncertainty and contradictions make her deeply human as she confronts the limits of her influence and her own complicity.

Through its examination of friendship and moral responsibility, The Aquatics by Osvalde Lewat challenges readers to consider what courage demands when standing against injustice carries a devastating personal price.

Why you should read The Aquatics

This compelling contemporary African novel is ideal for readers who enjoy:

• African literary fiction
• Political fiction about corruption and repression
• LGBTQ African fiction
• Novels about friendship and betrayal
• Stories exploring power and moral responsibility
• Fiction by African women writers
• African literature in translation
• Character driven stories about difficult choices

Readers who appreciate bold stories about power, identity and society can explore more African fiction from Cassava Republic Press

Winner of three major literary prizes

Lewat’s novel won the Pan African Prize for Literature, the Kourouma Prize and the French Academy Literature Prize.

Its combination of political urgency and emotional depth has earned international recognition. Learn more about The Aquatics and Osvalde Lewat through English PEN.

About Osvalde Lewat

Osvalde Lewat is a Cameroonian author, photographer and internationally recognised documentary filmmaker. Her work explores human rights, identity, political power and contemporary African society.

Her documentary films have been broadcast internationally, and she received a Peabody Award for her filmmaking. The Aquatics by Osvalde Lewat is her debut novel and her English language literary debut.

About the translator

Maren Baudet Lackner is an American literary translator from French. She has translated numerous works for English language readers and has received recognition from PEN Presents and PEN Translates.

Her translation brings Lewat’s politically urgent and emotionally charged story to a wider international audience.

Powerful, unsettling and deeply relevant, The Aquatics asks what friendship requires when fear becomes law and silence becomes complicity.