The Secret of the Purple Lake

by Yaba Badoe, Gbolahan Adams (Illustrator)

Overview

The Secret of the Purple Lake is a collection of five interlinked stories that take us from Ghana to Orkney, and from Spain to Norway and Thailand. As a minor character from one story assumes a major role in the next, we meet a fascinating cast, including Imoro the magic elephant, the Walrus Prince, and the Wild Princesses of Rousay. The protagonist of the opening tale, The Fisherman's Daughter, has to retrieve her dead father's bones from the bottom of the sea, in order to bring harmony back to her seaside village. In fulfilling her task, she must evade the clutches of The Fish-man of the Purple Lake. The Fish-man, a monstrous creature with the body of a man and the head of a fish, was once a beautiful boy from the Sahel, and has his own story about how he became the Fish-man.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781911115311
Publisher:	Cassava Republic Press
Publication date:	04/24/2018
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	10 - 13 Years

About the Author

Yaba Badoe is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. A graduate of King’s College Cambridge, she worked as a civil servant in Ghana before joining the BBC. Her short stories have been published in Critical Quarterly and African Love Stories: an anthology edited by Ama Ata Aidoo. In 2009 her debut novel, True Murder, was published by Jonathan Cape.

Editorial Reviews

2018-03-05
Five intertwined short stories all involve journeys that rarely conclude at home.In "The Fisherman's Daughter," set in the Ghana Empire, Ajuba prefers fishing with her father over helping her mother. When Ajuba's father dies at sea, Nana, the wise woman, says the sea also wants Ajuba. The villagers give her to the sea, where she must accomplish several monumental tasks and return her father's bones to the village. Eventually Ajuba becomes a Mami-Wata—a mermaid. Aspects of this tale are further explored in the volume's third and fourth tales, and the second and fifth tales similarly connect. Despite fantastical plots, the places are real—and all over the place: Ghana, Senegal, Scotland, the California coast, etc. Despite this, the stories fail as world stories, as gender and cultural stereotypes abound: the Norse king's masculinist insistence on bearing a son prompts him to mistreat his wife; the Cherokee Indian who comes to Orkney to woo a princess arrives with a troupe of dancing bears and leaves in a magic canoe; and a Sikh prince from India wears a "fat orange turban" and a cashmere rug. In the end, compulsory heterosexuality reigns, and even the women who seem to have options don't. The watercolor images will help readers imagine the unimaginable plots, but they add little to the stories.A disappointing affirmation of the status quo. (Fantasy. 9-12)

Kirkus Reviews