Description
In 1910, when foreign invaders storm her village, young Princess Samarah’s fluency in English becomes her undoing. Betrayed by her own voice, she’s ripped from her homeland and forced into servitude on a distant plantation. Haunted by memories of her mother and Bintum—the childhood love who risks everything to find her—Samarah clings to the fragments of a life stolen. But tragedy strikes again, leaving her alone… and furious.
Then comes Mayne Patterson, the son of her captor. He is everything she should hate—yet his devotion begins to unravel the walls around her heart. As Samarah wrestles with loyalty to her past and the dangerous pull of forbidden desire, she must choose between the love she was promised and the one she never expected.
Set against the backdrop of colonial Kamerun, this powerful debut explores identity, resilience, and the cost of love in a world ruled by power and betrayal.
Reviews
“…In a rather dramatic twist, Budji’s novel presents a romantic come-together of sorts. Unlike Yenla, Samarah is not shy enough to resist sharing her feelings with Mayne Patterson, though she harbors a seething resentment towards the colonial system. A system that punishes anyone who tries to break away from their control. Her tongue is acerbic and her anger fiery when she misses her beloved Bintum.”
—Mokom Muluh, Literary Critic
“Boundless revisits the oft-addressed theme of culture contact and conflict in its own fresh, delectable style. Yet it also gives us glimpses of the African personality, who existed before the coming of the whites, giving the lie to the Eurocentric idea that Africa was complete darkness without a glorious past of its own. The novel demonstrates how an oppressed people resisted, perished, confronted the loss of their world and adapted to the injustices and rigours of a new society…”
—Valentine Nfon Tameh
“Boundless is replete with twists and turns that knock the socks off your feet even when you think you have it all figured out. Budji more than delivers for a debut writer. She leaves the reader dreaming that hope is never lost if you only care to look hard enough around you and in places where others only dream of.”
—Innocent Chia
