Scale Boy: An African Childhood

An extraordinary chronicle of youth that evokes the paradoxes of modern Africa--complex, contradictory, and full of conflict, tragedy, and joy.

Patrice Nganang, the acclaimed author of Dog Days, Mount Pleasant, and, most recently, A Trail of Crab Tracks, which was a 2022 New Yorker Book of the Year, writes about his vibrant, animated youth in Cameroon, a period of upheaval and change in the country's history and in his life.

Scale Boy is a memoir that brings great brightness and joy to the tumultuous years of discovering oneself and one's community; though there are moments of danger and confusion in his story, Nganang aims to present a new vision of a young Black African man's coming-of-age.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 01/20/2026
ISBN: 9780374614515
Pages: 464
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.00d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 11/24/2025