Scale Boy: An African Childhood

by Patrice Nganang

An extraordinary chronicle of youth that evokes the paradoxes of modern Africa—complex, contradictory, and full of conflict, tragedy, and joy.

Patrice Nganang, the acclaimed author of Dog Days, Mount Pleasant, and, most recently, A Trail of Crab Tracks, which was a 2022 New Yorker Book of the Year, writes about his vibrant, animated youth in Cameroon, a period of upheaval and change in the country’s history and in his life.

Scale Boy is a memoir that brings great brightness and joy to the tumultuous years of discovering oneself and one’s community; though there are moments of danger and confusion in his story, Nganang aims to present a new vision of a young Black African man’s coming-of-age.

Genres: Memoir

434 pages, Kindle Edition

Expected publication January 20, 2026

Reviews

[Erin Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read an early ARC of this book courtesy of NetGalley. While I enjoyed Patrice Nganang's writing overall, I found the book a little hard to follow at times. I occasionally got lost in the details, and certain sections read more like a history textbook than a memoir—which isn't technically bad, but it did affect my engagement with the story.

[Lydia Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This was a book that I truly wanted to love, but it fell short of my expectations. Having never read Patrice Nganang's work before, I wasn't very familiar with his writing style, so this was new. A lot of history is weaved into the storytelling of this book, which was great, but sometimes I felt like I was reading a history or sociology text instead of a memoir.