By Megan Greenwood
Francis B. Nyamnjoh. Intimate Strangers | 334 pages | 229 x 152 mm | 2010 | Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon | Paperback
I cannot help but reflect on what having a BSocSci in English and Social Anthropology offers me as I approach writing a review of Francis Nyamnjoh's (2010) Intimate Strangers. Both disciplines offer lenses through which to review literature. What sets them apart? The one concerns itself with character and plot development, literary techniques and thematic explorations. The other shows interest in methodological principles and the development and substantiation of arguments - yet not at the exclusion of thematic exploration and literary aesthetics. Which lens is more appropriate for Nyamnjoh's book? Perhaps some of my hesitancy to settle for either is reflective of the way in which Intimate Strangers seems to traverse the boundary lines between fiction and ethnography.
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Book blurb
How does it feel to live without an identity, without a deeper meaning of the word me because you know nothing about yourself? How can you measure the intensity of the pain you feel in your soul when you face the horrible prospect of totally losing the chance of eternal happiness in the loving arms of a man because of a dark past you don’t know?
The United Nations-organised plebiscite on 11 February 1961 was one of the most significant events in the history of the southern and northern parts of the British-administered trust territory in Cameroon. John Percival was sent by the then Colonial Office as part of the team to oversee the process. 
In an article on Cameroon literature in English published in 2004 in the French language literary journal Africultures, Pierre Fandio of the University of Buea noted that while Francophone Cameroon literature has been generally militant in nature, with many of its first generation writers having faced exile or imprisonment, Anglophone Cameroon literature, until very recently, largely focused on romance (“A few nights and days”, “Because of women”, “Taboo love”, etc.) and on “omnibus themes” which “interest everyone but don’t discuss anything of substance” (Sov Mbang the Soothsayer, Lukong and the Leopard, The Good Foot, etc.).
Some time ago, in 1993, a forum of anglophone Cameroon writers held under the auspices of the Goethe Institute of Yaounde produced, among many excellent articles, a reflection by Tatah H. Mbuy on “The Moral Responsibility of the Writer in a Pluralist Society”. Every such writer, says Mbuy, is to see himself as a spokesman for his society. He must seek the truth, propagate it and defend it. He is to be the prophet and soothsayer of his society, pricking the consciences of all and trying to correct faults where these are to be found. Elsewhere in this forum other participants described present-day anglophone writing as concerned with “deconstructing victimhood”, through a discourse revolving around shared values or reference points. 
Dibussi Tande is an Anglophone Cameroonian. At least this is the threshold on which he stands in this collection of poetry titled No turning back. Yet Dibussi forces us to turn back and look at the pivotal volcanic moments in Cameroon’s history between 1990- 1993. During this time the wind of change which brought down the Berlin Wall and fueled the Perestroika train reached Cameroon. The result was not only the launching of the Social Democratic front by Ni John Fru Ndi in 1990, an event which ushered in multi-party politics in Cameroon, but a renaissance of Anglophone Cameroon Nationalism or what became known as “the Anglophone Cameroon question”.
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