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This was an interesting quick read that I enjoyed a lot. It's a short historical fiction novel based on true events that happened in the 1920's in Africa with a fictional twist. I had a few issues with the pacing at times, especially when the plot went into an information dump and really brought the story to a stand still. The worst was with Edoa. This is a translation of a french(?) novel, so perhaps the issue could have been because of that. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Overall though, it was a quick read that kept me entertained throughout.

**ARC Via NetGalley**

I guess I'm just not a big fan of satire, at least not this type. I am really interested in the historical story, but the writing style didn't do it for me. I think if you liked Catch-22 or Kurt Vonnegut you might like this one. This is another one of those situations where it would be really nice if there were preview samples on NetGalley.

I found the voice of this novel completely out of sync with the content of this novel. I felt that I was simultaneously being asked to witness an atrocity while maintaining a nothing-to-see-here attitude.

The presence of the French, as colonists in early twentieth century Cameroon, was a time of local unease and suspicion. African sleeping sickness (African trypanosomiasis), caused by the bite of an infected tsetse fly, was rampant. As the disease spread, a French military doctor, Eugene Jamot, was sent to Yaounde to develop a strategy and treatment plan. Jamot's preventive mission included establishing a network of mobile units to diagnose and treat sleeping sickness. The medical protocol developed required that a patient receive an injection of tryparsamide, a derivative of arsenic, which was toxic even if proper guidelines were followed. The natives were "skeptical of the White Man's medicine." They had reason for concern.

In the Bafia subdivision of Cameroon, without clearance from Dr. Jamot, Dr. Monier, a junior colleague, altered the vaccine protocol by increasing the dose of tryparsamide three fold in an attempt to control resistant cases. Although many recovered from sleeping sickness, over 700 Cameroonians became blind. Unfortunately, Dr. Jamot owned "the blunder". The subsequent death of a prominent chief and his eldest son, precipitated the view that blindness was a plot orchestrated by the white colonists. The health center of Bafia was destroyed...the personnel vanished. "...it was interesting...there were patients who owed their sight to the negligence of a native nurse [who stopped providing treatment], even though that might ultimately cost them their lives."

How might the chaotic environment be prevented from escalating into a full scale war? Esteemed Chief Atangara agreed to mediate if his niece Edoa, the only trained Black nurse, was safely escorted back home. Dr. Jamot enlisted the aid of Dr. Damienne Bourdin. Disguised as a nun, Damienne travelled through the jungle with two companions. Nama was the interpreter. Ndong, a Pygmy, dressed solely in an animal hide loincloth, wore an amulet, as a so-called "invisibility cloak". Through the jungle, Damienne was on high alert..."fear of ending up on a spit." She soon appeared scantily clothed!

Edoa, the nurse, had learned how to think outside the box. "What I learned from our differences was the most important part of my education-I met religious, non-religious and pagans of both races...cultural effervescence...after a few compromises to balance out racism and tribalism...".

A memorial to French military physician, Eugene Jamot was erected in Yaounde, Cameroon for his contribution to the prevention of sleeping sickness in the early 1920's. On the 75th Anniversary of his birth, a Cameroonian Postage Stamp was released. I highly recommend this work of historical fiction.

Thank you Amazon Crossing and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was an interesting story that takes different points of view centered around the sleeping sickness pandemic. I had no awareness of this event prior to this book and this story was an engaging and thoughtful critique of colonial racism and misunderstanding in the face of difficulty. Even the best intentions are still horrible. Great read.

I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Before doctors understood the causes of and developed reliable treatments for the disease, African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) outbreaks could kill hundreds of thousands of people. Because the disease is caused by parasites in the tsetse fly, efforts to control and hopefully eradicate the disease involve controlling the population of the fly and treating patients as soon as possible. The course of dealing with sleeping sickness hasn’t run as smoothly as my quick background might make it sound. Mutt-Lon’s satirical novella, The Blunder, takes its inspiration from an actual historical incident. Mutt-Lon uses the real blunder and its aftermath to shine a light on colonial racism and paternalism and tribal conflict.

Damienne Bourdin is not a star in the medical field when she is dispatched to French Cameroon in 1929 to take on a personal mission for the head of Cameroon’s sleeping sickness eradication efforts, Eugène Jamot. Jamot explains that one of the doctors in his program has made a big, big mistake in calculating doses of tryparsamide and atoxyl. At the correct dosage, these drugs can treat sleeping sickness. At too high a dosage, it causes irreparable blindness due to the arsenic in the medicines. Hundreds of people were left blind. This mistake destroyed a lot of the confidence Cameroonians had in western medicine and the French government, to the point that a war might break out against the French. Damienne’s mission is to go into the interior to find the daughter of one of the most powerful Cameroonian chiefs. Edoa trained as a nurse and was caught in the violence. If Damienne can bring her back, the chief promises to use his influence to head off a bigger conflict. To keep things quiet, Damienne goes into the interior with only two guides: an official from the powerful chief’s government and a man named Ndongo, who is always described as a pygmy without reference to his tribe.

A savvier protagonist would have more questions about Jamot’s hair-brained quest. I certainly did. Jamot might be a genius when it comes to infectious disease but he clearly knows nothing about espionage or diplomacy. Almost as soon as Damienne leaves Yaoundé things start to go wrong. Damienne’s journey introduces her to angry Cameroonians, buffoonish colonial officers, and medical officers caught in the middle just trying to keep people alive. Her own prejudices toward the Cameroonians don’t help either. There are many cringe-worthy moments when Damienne is astonished to learn that Cameroonians are intelligent people who don’t need any Europeans to tell them what to do.

Amy B. Reid, the faithful translator, describes The Blunder as a hilarious lampooning of French Cameroon at the end of the 1920s. Hilarious is not the adjective I would use. It didn’t make me laugh. More than anything else, it made me angry. It’s possible that I’m missing things that would be funny if I was able to read the book in the original French. It’s also possible that I’m missing a lot of cultural and historical context. That said, not making me laugh is not a reason not to read this book. Don’t go looking for humor here. Instead, pay attention to the very pointed satire of the chaotic situations Damienne finds herself in and to the oblivious racism of the Europeans. Mutt-Lon’s verbal barbs strike deep.

3.5 stars- rounded up. This was an interesting read. This is a short, historical fiction novel based on true events set in Cameroon in the 1920's. A white doctor takes liberties with the procedure for treating an epidemic of sleeping sickness, and causes a wave of blindness in the patients who received his treatment. In the aftermath of the violent anger by the local population as a result of the medical blunder, Damienne, a white doctor, is sent on a politically sensitive mission to retrieve the niece of the region's most prominent Chief from the village where the upheaval started. As we follow Damienne on her adventure through the jungle, guided by the resourceful Pygmy Ndongo, we learn of the events that lead to the medical blunder and the possible repercussions for the stability of the country, and also see how Damienne's own prejudices and biases shift as she travels further from familiar territory and must depend on the knowledge and traditions of Ndongo and other native people she encounters.

I liked the overall arc of the story, and I appreciated the author and translator notes at the beginning- not only are readers given context for the outdated, racist language, but are also guided towards paying attention to how the language is used over the course of the book. I did feel like the pacing was very uneven- I really enjoyed the adventure tone of Damienne's journey, but then we would get flashbacks to her personal history, or the background of a character she was introduced to, and it was a bit info-dumpy for my taste. I thought the information we gleaned in these instances was relevant, but was not smoothly integrated into the events of the story. Overall I liked the translation, but I did notice some moments where there were some modern-isms, or very formal speaking language, that felt a little out of place. This was not a consistent issue, so I wonder if this came from an attempt to emphasize the voice of certain characters- to give a distinct tone to characters who were speaking their native language, a second language, what their education level was, etc,

I really liked how the plot served as an allegory for the lasting effects of colonialism- how even the most well-meaning people who try to "help" are still hampered by their unseen biases, and can cause long-lasting unintended consequences among the local population. I also liked that periodically we would get perspectives from some of the native characters that would serve as a contradiction to the assumptions by white characters.

DNF - The translation for this book was absolutely phenomenal & the story itself is interesting but, after reading the translator's note, I didn't feel encouraged nor enthused to pursue reading the story as the plot felt laid out within those couple pages. I appreciate the approach to the story but the characters were so dull that I didn't care to know what happened to them. Again, the translator's note did explain the reasoning behind that but, given that the approach is taken to highlight the racist ideologies of people directly linked to medical / colonization is one that I have seen presented in a number of books prior to this one, I felt at a loss for what particular aspect of these characters would be one which would lead me down a different path than others. By this I mean, the racism linked to colonization & people pursuing 'civilizing' groups has been written a number of times. Save the fact that the author was perhaps desirous to present their ties/experiences to the subject matter I didn't feel that the story presented anything unique nor anything that would make it stand out.
Some passages felt that they might be included to be read as 'ironic' but mixed with the vapidity of the characters & the lunacy of their beliefs, I couldn't tell for sure. For example, Damienne thought that France's newly implemented politics of democracy were something that had been around forever, versus the very close similarities between monarchies & hereditary Chiefs.
In any case, this book is wonderfully written & it's very short so, I'm sure it will prove to be a wonderful read for many but, I lost interest very quickly.

The Blunder by Mutt-Lon, translated by Amy Reid, is a novella – a fictionalized account of a true event that I hadn't been aware of previously, where an outbreak of sleeping sickness was treated by colonial doctors, only to have them introduce hundreds of cases of blindness. This was caused in part due to scientific misunderstanding, but also a lack of oversight and kind of a colonialist "We're going to make everything better for you" attitude. This book takes place within the context of that historical event. What's really interesting about this story is that the novella is written by a Black author from Cameroon, but our protagonist is a French white doctor who has come there as part of her tour of duty in the medical program. We as the readers are in her head seeing her perspective of the local Black population of Cameroon as well as the indigenous population, the pygmies. There's a translators note and an author's note about how that is intentionally meant to be a little bit uncomfortable in terms of revealing the protagonist’s perspective on the "primitive" nature of the local population, as well as her misunderstanding their motivations. I found that really interesting. This is a great story of an adventure where our protagonist, Damienne Bourdin, a young white woman, has come to Cameroon to assist in the treatment effort of sleeping sickness. She has lost her own child, and so she has some of her own baggage about her self-worth and her reputation. She gets to Cameroon right as the crisis about the blindness is bubbling to the surface, and there's a rebellion brewing as the locals are suspicious. Damienne is tasked with crossing the country with a pygmy guide to get the niece of a powerful man and bring her back safely to prevent this uprising. She meets various people along the way, and there were some really interesting twists about how that adventure unfolded. I really appreciated this adventure and the characters, as well as learning about the historical situation. I do think this might have been better suited as a novel instead of a novella. The ending felt a little bit rushed and I wanted to know a little bit more about how certain events unfolded in the conclusion. The narrative perspective was interesting as well, where some of it was narrated with a little bit of distance. At times, it felt a little bit like the narrative was telling us instead of showing, but I think that may have been done intentionally. Overall, it was a really interesting story, and I gave it four stars.

My first book to read by this author but definitely not my last! Such a gripping novel that made it hard for me to put his book down once I started it. Highly recommend!!

This was quite engaging, if a bit depressing at times. Nonetheless, I enjoyed watching the characters and couldn't predict the plot or ending. General fiction fans will probably like this one.

I really appreciate the free ARC for review!!

An engaging and thoughtful read. I felt a bit deflated after reading this, nevertheless, I enjoyed following through the events of the story. Looking forward to what else the author has in store. Reading this I realized that this is one to watch out for!