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Discretion

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Overview

From American Book Award-winning author Elizabeth Nunez, a powerful novel that explores an intricate lovers' triangle, the human thirst for passion, and the myriad ways desire can betray those who have fallen under its spell.

Descended from warriors and raised by missionaries, Oufoula is a diplomat whose wealth and charm make him both publicly admired and envied. From a tragic childhood he emerged a man who leads a disciplined life of respect, married to Nerida, a woman he did not want to deceive. But the beautiful Marguerite, a Jamaican-born artist living in New York, makes him question what ideals he can live by, and which values he can betray.

For twenty years, Oufoula has carried a secret in his heart, a secret of his love for Marguerite. Though they have been separated for two decades by Marguerite's call for propriety, Oufoula refuses to let his desire wane. When the lovers are at last reunited, the rekindling of their passion forces Oufoula to come to terms with the core of his character: Is he willing to sacrifice his marriage, his career, and the very foundations of the life he has struggled to create, all for the love of one woman?

Oufoula's confession is adorned with the literature of his European education, and shrouded by the spirits and responsibilities of Africa. Caught between myth and reason, Oufoula reveals himself to be a soul trapped in every way, who, like Faust, would bargain with the devil for fulfillment . . . but was never offered any choice.

This is the portrait of a man who cannot be forgotten. A gripping, masterfully crafted tale of love, deceit, and the human compulsion for power, Discretion forces us to reconsider that ever-compelling question: At what price passion?

Editorial Reviews

Right from the start of this haunting novel, Nunez adopts the mesmerizing, myth-spinning voice of an oral storyteller, assuming the identity of an African-born male. When Oufoula Sindede becomes his unnamed country's foreign ambassador to the U.S., he is a happy husband and father, married to the daughter of his country's president. Yet he's aware of an unfulfilled need, and it comes as no surprise when he falls in love with Marguerite, an artist in New York. Their subsequent relationship spans a quarter of a century, most of it spent apart after Marguerite balks upon learning Oufoula already has a wife. By the time their final meetings occur, tragedy has befallen both. Always torn between his responsibilities to Africa, family and passion, what will Oufoula now choose to do? In unaffected prose, Nunez (whose Bruised Hibiscus won an American Book Award) explores self-deception, envy, Christian monogamy vs. African polygamy and the very real dilemma of loving two people at once. Her nonjudgmental exploration of the simple/complex nature of marriage, love and fidelity enriches her portrayal of Oufoula, allowing the reader to feel sympathy for a decent man who cannot deny his passion. To some extent, the code of his profession is to blame: Oufoula is told, early on, "to be a successful diplomat you will have to learn how to lie." At the end, a broken Oufoula contemplates the lessons of his life and wonders what really constitutes the better part of valor, behaving discreetly or choosing the truth? This rich, multilayered narrative is powerful in its sweep and moving in its insight. Agent, Ivy Fisher Stone. 5-city author tour. (Mar.)Forecast: Though aimed at African-American audiences (Ballantine will advertise in African-American venues online and in print), this novel has the potential to reach all readers appreciative of fine prose and an emotionally resonant story.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Author Information

Bio of Elizabeth Nunez

Elizabeth Nunez is the author of four novels, including Bruised Hibiscus, winner of an American Book Award. She lives in Amityville, New York.

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Additional Info

Imprint

One World/Ballantine

Filesize

1.32 MB

Number of Pages

288

eBook ISBN

9780307521453

Awards

  • Hurston/Wright Legacy Award

Excerpt from: Discretion by Elizabeth Nunez

When I was a child no one envied me. I was born the son of a mannish woman and a womanish man. Who in Africa would envy me such a fate? My mother, I was told, was so beautiful that men traveled far distances for a glimpse of her face. I do not know if this is true, but I have heard that when she obeyed the wishes of her father and consented to marry the man who would become my father, her suitors began a fast that lasted days. And there was one, who, unable to conceive of life without her, put a razor to his throat. My mother never loved my father. But love was not a prerequisite for marriage in my mother’s time. That she may have been in love with the man who killed himself because he could not bear to live one more day with the knowledge that she shared another man’s bed was of no consequence to her family, and, thus, it was required to be of no consequence to her. I was just five years old when she left my father for good. No one said she left him because she did not love him, but the women whispered among themselves that my mother wept in secret uncontrollably on the days when it was her turn to sleep in my father’s hut. My mother had left my father once before. It was on the eve of her wedding. Her brothers found her, hours later, a mile away from the village where the man, ten years her senior, whom it was rumored she knew (and that word was used maliciously in its biblical sense), was discovered that morning sprawled across the floor of his hut, his clothes stinking of stale palm wine, the cut on his throat so fine, so miniscule, that one would have missed it entirely if not for the stream of blood that had since thickened near his neck and formed a dark red pool, almost black, around his head like a halo. He was a surgeon, perhaps not called so by doctors in the West, for he was not trained in the ways of Western medicine, but a scientist nonetheless. A specialist in the art of slicing and stitching: repairing the human body. There was no doubt that he knew when he put his razor to the vein in his neck carrying his lifeblood freshly pumped from his heart that one movement of his hand, expertly applied, would stop the breath in his body. It was a deliberate act, a suicide. The wonder of it was its cause: that love could have such power, that it could lead a man to his finality! To the villagers’ way of thinking, any man, supposing he was not sick or lame or disinterested in women, could easily replace one woman with another. A surgeon of the reputation of the dead man would simply have had to make his desires known and he could have had any woman of his choice, perhaps not one more beautiful than my mother, but certainly one with a dowry far richer than any her parents could have afforded. In the first five years of my life I heard this story a hundred times, so it seemed to my budding imagination, which, when it blossomed later, would be the cause of much of my anguish. The women would tell each other the story about this man and my mother as if the mere retelling could shed light on a mystery that baffled them, the most puzzling part of which was that my mother, who was to be married the next day, would jeopardize her future and that of her family for a dead man. For my father was a wealthy and powerful man, far wealthier and more powerful than the surgeon who lived in one of the six villages that had been won in wars by my father’s ancestors, fierce warriors known for their brutality, and, paradoxically, their compassion. When they conquered a village, they took for themselves everything of worth: the beautiful women whether married or not, wood carvings that pleased them and the artists as well, whom they would commission to sculpt likenesses of themselves. I remember seeing these carvings when I was a child. My mother took me one day to a discarded hut at the back of my father’s compound. Before w