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The publication of Happiness in 2019 marked a near twenty-year immersion in narratives that dealt with notions of war and trauma, an inquiry that began with a memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water (2002), written at the time of the civil conflict in Sierra Leone, and continuing through four novels, culminating in Happiness. In The Memory of Love and through the character of British psychologist Adrian Lockheart, a trauma specialist who arrives in Sierra Leone in the wake of the conflict, I engaged most directly with conceptual notions of trauma. It is in this novel that Attila Asare, a Ghanaian psychiatrist who runs a mental health facility in postwar Sierra Leone, makes his first appearance. Some years later, following publication of the Croatian-set novel The Hired Man, I found myself compelled to return to the character of Asare and the subject of trauma in my most recent novel, Happiness. The clinical recognition of trauma and of PTSD is relatively recent and has been the focus of intense interest since the 1970s, one that I daresay has not yet peaked. Thus definitions of trauma remain rapidly evolving and fluid, both in terms of what we mean by the designation “trauma,” as well as the ways in which trauma is expressed by victims of violence. Developments in clinical research and corresponding critiques have been evolving contemporaneously to my own writing. A parallel and unfolding discussion among literary trauma theorists has also taken place, one that has included my work.

The following interview with Aminatta Forna took place in front of an audience at the 43rd annual meeting of African Literature Association, 14–17 June 2017, at Yale University, New Haven, CT, U.S.A. The interview was part of a roundtable sponsored by the Windham Campbell Prize at Yale University titled “Meet the Author: Ernest Cole with Aminatta Forna.” I want to thank Aminatta, in the very first instance, for agreeing to have this interview with me.

The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism. Animal Farm Prophecy Fulfilled in Africa: A Call to a Values and Systems Revolution. Taylor, William C. Military Responses to the Arab Uprisings and the Future of Civil-Military Relations in the Middle East.