The Dance of Scorpions by Lloney Monono

"The poems in this anthology serve as snapshots in time, revealing both the poet's thoughts and experiences over a period of sixteen years. They are categorised into Love, Life, Lust and Living. From shy lines on encountering love in ‘First Encounters Of A Different Kind’ to uninhibited lusty lines in ‘An Hour With Consuela’ and from desperate depths of ‘Dementia’ to the wicked world of war in ‘Eighth Plague’ this collection of a hundred plus poems promises quite a thought provoking read"

In The Dance of Scorpions, Lloney Monono, who is part of the emerging third generation of English-speaking Cameroonian writers, successfully bridges that supposedly irreconcilable gap between the “literature of songs” and the literature of protest. In this impressive anthology of over 100 poems spanning a 17-year period, Monono masterfully navigates the political, social and private spheres without losing the essence of his muse
[...]
The Dance of Scorpions is a veritable literary tour de force which takes us on an exciting and eventful journey into the past, present and future. It is unarguably one of the finest and the most complete poetry collections to come out of the ex-British Southern Cameroons; one that not only tells the story of a people, a country and a continent, but also that of an individual – his hopes and fears, his successes and disappointments, his triumphs and tragedies.

In this anthology, Monono demonstrates that he is a renaissance man with a solid grasp of a broad array of subjects. His world is one where Zeus the supreme deity, Eros (god of love) Aphrodite (goddess of lust and beauty) Ares (god of Savage war, vengeance, and anger), Athena (goddess of wisdom), Nyx (goddess of darkness) and Socrates the philosopher, all live harmoniously under the same roof.

Click here to read complete review by Dibussi Tande