Hemley Boum

Hemley Boum (born 1973) is a Cameroonian novelist. She has received a number of notable awards for her novels, including the Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire, the and the Prix Ahmadou-Kourouma. Her novels have been translated into Dutch and English.

Life and career Boum was born in 1973 in Douala, Cameroon. Her mother was a French teacher, Growing up, she read European writers at school; she has said "African authors were markedly absent, even in libraries".

Boum studied Social Sciences at the Catholic University of Central Africa in Yaoundé, graduating with a master's degree. She subsequently studied international trade at the Lille Catholic University and obtained a qualification in marketing and quality from another institution in Lille. In 2009, she moved to Paris with her husband and two children.

Boum has publicly advocated for greater recognition of Cameroon's independence war and for forgotten nationals figures. . In interviews, she has explained that her novels deliberately center “anonymous” people rather than famous historical figures, especially in Les Maquisards, where she reconstructs the experiences of ordinary Cameroonian's during the independence struggle

Boum has published five novels . She started writing her first novel, Le Clan des femmes, online in blog form. It was published as a book in 2010 and tells the story of an African woman in the early 20th century based on Boum's memories of her grandmother. It also dealt with the topic of polygamy. Boum's second novel, Si d'aimer..., received the award in 2013.

In 2019, Boum's fourth novel, Les jours viennent et passent, was published. It is about the lives of three generations of Cameroonian women and the impacts of extremism in Cameroon. It won the Prix Ahmadou-Kourouma in 2020. An English translation, Days Come and Go, was published by Bakwa Books in the United States in 2022. In 2025, the Association of French-Language Writers awarded its Grand prix Afrique to Hemley Boum for her novel Le Rêve du pêcheur.

Works Le Clan des femmes, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2010 Si d'aimer…, Ciboure: La Cheminante, 2012 Les maquisards, Ciboure: La Cheminante, 2015 Les jours viennent et passent, Paris: Gallimard, 2019, (Dutch translation: De dagen komen en gaan, 2020, ) (English translation: Days Come and Go, 2022, ) Le Rêve du pêcheur, Paris: Gallimard, Collection Blanche, 2024,