Confrontations by Simone Atangana Bekono Published: 11 January 2024

Salome was bullied for years and no one did a single thing to help her. One day she finally snapped. Now at just sixteen years old, she's being held in a secure unit for young offenders. Salome's counsellor, the man whose good opinion is key to her release, is best known for his racist gaffes on reality TV.

Her father has recently been diagnosed with liver cancer and her elder sister Miriam's main preoccupation is to get out of their small, close-minded village as soon as possible. Both at home and in the unit, things are unbearably tense. Salome finds it hard to keep her temper and harder still to think about the crime she is charged with committing.

But as time passes, she finds new strength to delve into the reasons for her rage and arrive at her own understanding of punishment, penitence and the paradoxical demands made on her existence as a Black woman. Raw and unsentimental, Confrontations is a powerful depiction of racism and resilience from one of the Netherlands' most exciting new literary voices.

This book is available for pre-order