A delightful millennial coming-of-age novel that is underpinned by weighty cultural commentaries on race, migration, colonialism, and finding one's own place in the world.

Protagonist Séraphin Turihamwe is the child of Rwandan refugees, whose parents have adapted as best they can to a less-than-ideal life in Namibia, in order to afford a future for their children. Séra offers the perspective of a first-generation immigrant that may well reflect the author's own, and which made the novel feel less of a university romp and comedy than it seems on the surface.

There was much I could not directly relate to in this character-driven novel, and yet perhaps that was its charm. I could allow myself the experience of all the superficial elements that were different from and to me, yet discover all the ways in which the elements of shared humanity prevailed and connected me to the protagonist.

The author was born in Rwanda, but raised in Namibia. This, his debut novel, was first published in 2019 in South Africa. It is set in Namibia and Cape Town South Africa and is a coming of age novel. We meet Séraphin, who is the oldest child of Rwandan refugee parents. He was raised in Namibia and is now in Cape Town studying law. The story has many flashbacks and is told with a lot of humour as we follow his character's growth. The issues of race and of being a refugee and never really fitting in is also explored. This beautifully written novel is a wonderful recommendation for readers looking to learn about other places and lives while being entertained. I quite enjoyed it.

The Eternal Audience of One is a hard book to succinctly encapsulate. I've seen this book described as a coming-of-age story focused on Séraphin, a young man whose family fled Rwanda and now live in Namibia. This is technically accurate; a significant element of the book is Séraphin's impending graduation from law school in Cape Town and his intentions for the future. Still, this doesn't feel like any coming-of-age story I've read before.

One of the things that makes this book very different is the non-linear timeline. While Séraphin's graduation is a focal point, the story jumps around, looking at the past of Seraphin and other characters in the book. I found this choice added an interesting element to the book that I think helped the author to juxtapose various experiences, but the execution was sometimes jarring, making demands of the reader in order to follow along.

Another unusual element is the differing voices of Séraphin. It seems like his inner monologue is broken into different Séraphin characters. This narrative choice occurs throughout the book, but one section looks at this more extensively and the descriptions in that section felt a bit fantasy-like to me. I liked the depiction of the competing impulses and thoughts that we have as we make choices and engage with others, but I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of this was. A few of the Séraphin's are move vividly described, but often they were just numbered. I preferred when Ngamje made them into archetypes and would have liked to have this element of the book expanded both to flesh out the voices and their purpose within the overall story.

While I appreciated these unusual elements of the book and enjoyed reading it, I'm not sure what The Eternal Audience of One was trying to be. Each individual thread of the story is great, but ultimately I think the different elements compete with each other for focus. There is the coming of age story, but this is also a story of family, racism, the immigrant experience, friendship, and so on. I think a book can certainly deal with a lot of big elements, and I think Ngamie makes a lot of good points in this book. I'm just not sure all of the threads came together in a clear picture for me. There was a lot going on here, though, so perhaps a second reading would help me to pull together all of the disparate parts more cohesively. Overall, though, I definitely enjoyed this book and feel it was worth reading.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for and ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to love this novel but it ended up falling flat for me in some ways. For the parts that I enjoyed, I liked that it addressed the complexities of being an African person in a different African country. Too often, all of Africa is lumped into one giant mass of land and people so as a reader, I find I don't often get to read about the differences between African people and how they interact with one another. I also liked how the story circulates around family and the question of home and returning home. As an Asian person, our cultures are similar in that way and I felt a kind of kinship reading about Séraphin's family and the Rwandan community they have in Namibia.

Séraphin as a character is not very likeable and while I understand not every character has to be, it just made reading the novel a little more difficult when you cannot relate or understand the motives of the main character. Séra also had multiple personalities or voices in his head which made reading a bit confusing as they weren't present all the time and, I didn't know when one of his personalities had actually spoken for him or, if it was just a voice in his head.

Structurally I found it hard to follow what was past and what was present since chapters often flipped between the two. Often it took me a few pages into the chapters to situate myself and understand that the author was talking about a past event or the present. Majority of the chapters are written in the perspective of Séra but sometimes it changes to someone else and I also found that confusing as the chapters did not identify at the beginning whose perspective or story would be told. Many books and stories change perspectives without a title but I felt the balance was off in that majority of chapters were written in Séra's perspective so when it changes to a different character, I was thrown off and removed from being immersed in the story in order to resituate myself.

Thank you for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I love this book. Rémy Ngamije has created a cast of characters that I am bereft to leave. Seraphin’s journey from childhood through to adulthood, is told in such a reminiscent manner, I feel as though I experienced it too. The back and forth, from present, to recent past, to before he was even conceived, reads just like memories should. A unique voice, Rémy Ngamije deserves a playlist of his own.

Books, at their best, transport you to a different time and place. When they're even better, they give you an insight into the world you would otherwise not have. The Eternal Audience of One does this. Namibia, Rwanda, places on a map before, at least for me. But after reading this the world came alive, the people more real than ever. It's a testament to a storyteller when you can not just see the world they are describing but hear it, smell it, begin to understand it.
Ngamije is seen as one of the rising stars in African literature. The Eternal Audience of One, it feels, is only the beginning. If you're looking to read about one man's struggles, which feel so different than your own but, in the end, are very much the same - the need to be seen, to find a home, to live to one's full potential.

I want to thank NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for this copy of a vibrant new voice in African writing. Having tented with a small group through beautiful Rwanda before the horrific genocide and travelled on my own through Namibia a decade later, I wanted to immerse myself in memories of those places. I got very little of that atmosphere. Instead, this was a powerful, character-drawn book with much thought-provoking content about race, refugees, the migrant experience, identity, nationalism and how it feels to be a foreigner in a new country. It explores family dynamics and friendships.

The author, Remy Ngamije, is an expressive writer who connects ideas in surprising ways. The structure was nonlinear, and I found it jumbled when switching back and forth to different past and present parts. It follows the story of the main character, Seraphin, as a child of Rwandan refugees growing up in Windhoek, Namibia. It is good to be reminded that not all Africans are living in poverty. This was a pleasant change for its focus on upper-middle-class professionals living comfortably and travelling and studying away from their countries of residence. In fact, Seraphin's parents met while studying and working in Paris and ended up back home in Rwanda, then fleeing to live in Namibia when chaos broke out in Rwanda in 1994. We see them preparing for a New Years' eve party at their home in Windhoek with Seraphin present along with his two younger brothers. The party was attended by a number of Rwandan refugees, including a wealthy migrant living in Canada whose son is living a frivolous and idle life. When Seraphin's father is asked later what tribe he was from, he replied Hutu. I had to wonder if their refugee friends included any of the Tutsis, who were predominately victims of the slaughter.

I cannot say I liked Seraphin, although it was his story. He is bored in Windhoek and wants to be far away from his family and Namibia. He considers himself as a cool alpha male but is vulnerable, has self-doubts and is indecisive. He is under pressure from his parents to become a lawyer. We get his inner dialogue through different voices of his conscience when he attempts to make a decision.

He wins a scholarship to study in Capetown, South Africa.
At University, he falls in with a rowdy group of diverse students of different races and from various African countries, 'The High Lords of Empireland.' He is the life of the never endless parties, bar hopping and excitement. He is their popular leader through his assertiveness and his popular CD mixes for various moods. He has a sarcastic sense of humour, which is often wounding to others, and he can be belligerent. There is much crude talk about sexual encounters. I feel the book is aimed at a younger audience, as I was not familiar with most of the references to the music, nor cared for all the dialogue about sex. Some of the friendships and love interests ended badly.

I think he matured by the end of the book and came to understand his family much better. I thought the ending to be abrupt and open to speculation. I hope the author continues to write about life in Africa. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

3.5 stars. It took me a while to get into this one, but overall I did enjoy it. I’m still not sure if I even liked Seraphin. The whole multiple voices got on my nerves at times. The book switches back and forth to various points in time in a way that confused me in places. I also don’t really understand Seraphin’s family dynamic and why he was so reserved around them. The second part of the book was a better than the first, but I could have done without all of the boastful conquest stories.