The Fisherman's Dream

A sweeping novel tracing the fate of a family divided by migration, memory, and the violent reshaping of their homeland

Zacharias is a fisherman in a coastal village in southern Cameroon. His community—shaped for generations by the river's rhythms and the meeting of forest and ocean—is upended by the arrival of logging companies, industrial trawlers, and predatory economic interests that exploit both land and people. Violence and irreversible change tear apart Zacharias's family. 

Decades later, his grandson Zack has fled Douala for Paris's 18th arrondissement. Isolated and adrift, Zack is haunted by a grandfather he never knew and a country whose wounds he carries in his body. 

Sweeping and emotionally resonant, The Fisherman's Dream braids together the destinies of grandfather and grandson, each carrying the weight of a world transformed by globalization, displacement, and the delicate inheritance of love. A work of rare lyricism and political force exploring the rupture of traditional worlds, and a moving multi-generational family story.



"A magnificent storyteller… Hemley Boum captures the beating heart of a people and their history."



"A powerful, polyphonic writer of immense generosity."



"Boum reweaves memory and political violence with rare finesse."



"Her writing is luminous, lucid, compassionate."