Set on the Ruzizi River above Lake Tanganyika, Cicinski’s exquisitely crafted second novel is the story of an old Burundian fisherwoman who sets out to hunt and kill the legendarily large and vicious crocodile that killed her husband a year previously; and of her granddaughter, Lenka, who follows her in the hopes of protecting her not only from the dangers she faces in her quest for vengeance, but from losing the last vestiges of the woman she once was. Through the course of the hunt, Cicinski paints a vivid picture not only of a relationship between a young girl full of hope and optimism and dreams of the future, and an old woman who has been all but destroyed by grief and an all-consuming desire for revenge, but more broadly of the relationship between humanity and nature, the experience of grief and ageing, and the character of a strong woman who even in her darkest moments of despair refuses to be ruled by the expectations of her society.
