Where the impossible becomes possible by virtue of the wondrous.”

The story of one man, two civilisations…
A tale of family, travels and self-discovery...
A novel about identity.

The hero of this novel, Aimé Billion, is a real outsider, who feels as a stranger not only in Africa or Europe, but even in his own body. While he is of Yoruba, Vietnamese and French descent, Africans consider him as a white man, while white people see him as an African. The grandson of an African sorcerer, he spends the first thirty-eight years of his life in Benin, where he works as a nursing assistant in a French hospital. He also helps the missionaries of the Norwegian Lutheran Church, among others by translating religious texts, prayers, even though he himself does not believe in God.
Leaving Benin, after a short detour in Bordeaux, he arrives in the faraway country of Norway, where the people know so much about being a stranger, about isolation, and it is among these reserved people, the Norwegians, that he will try to find happiness in a very special love relationship. Being a home care aide, he meets a physically challenged woman and they will gradually grow closer and closer.

On the one hand, the novel, in a very enjoyable, sensitive style, presents the West African country of Benin, its traditions, among other voodoo, magic, the beliefs anchored in folklore and the healing activities; on the other hand, it paints a picture of the welfare society of Norway.

The primary aim of Árpád Kun’s important, emotionally uplifiting novel is not, however, to compare the two countries – while these two civilisations are, of course, protagonists of the novel in their own right, the book is more than that: it is the story of Aimé Billion, a tale of family and travels; it is a Bildungsroman, a novel about identity. It is original and outstanding in its portrayal of the human condition, which is here neither black-and-white, nor apocalyptic like it so often appears in books, but rather perplexing and inscrutable in its complexity, the mirror of a real world described with deep empathy.

Happy North is beautiful fiction – a story which brings strange worlds to the reader and makes them seem familiar… and even heart-achingly homelike.

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