Producers, publishers, broadcasters
A story ready for the screen and for comics
The House of Happiness is a ten-volume novel by Steve Tiambo, available for adaptation as a mini-series or a comic. Each volume maps to one episode, carried by three narrators from the same Yaoundé family. Adaptation rights are negotiated directly with the author.
In Yaoundé, a man condemned by illness tells how his family faced invisible forces, and how faith and love kept the house standing.
- Format
- 10 episodes of 45 to 52 minutes, one per volume; or a comic in several volumes
- Genre
- Family drama, supernatural, spirituality
- Settings
- Odza in Yaoundé (1990s to 2000s), then Europe
- Narrators
- Ike (the youngest), Jeannette (the eldest), Régine (the middle child)
- Available material
- Complete novel in French and English, 10 illustrated covers, an Instagram community
- Rights
- Screen and comic adaptation: contact the author
Why this story now
African fiction is finding its audience today on streaming platforms and TV channels, in Africa and across the diaspora. The House of Happiness brings a supernatural rooted in everyday Cameroonian life, with universal stakes: a family, a loss, faith put to the test.
Each volume already has its own tension, mystery and partial resolution, which makes it natural material for a series. The change of narrator in volumes 4 and 8 offers different viewpoints on the same events.
Season arc
- Episode 1 · The Holy Water — Between Christian prayer, ancestral rituals and raw fear, a whole family fights to save one of its own from an invisible evil.
- Episode 2 · The Wall — Amid lorries, cats and a power cut, this horror story probes the line between nightmare, premonition and faith.
- Episode 3 · The Animal — A story about a father figure's fall.
- Episode 4 · The Circle — In the Odza house in Yaoundé, she watches her parents' marriage fracture and her father sink into drink and a mysterious circle of village friends. One night, five crows in a ring herald a supernatural ordeal.
- Episode 5 · The Friendship — It explains why that friendship became a threat, and follows Ike's bond with Flavy, Paul's daughter.
- Episode 6 · My Model — In Yaoundé in January 2000, the return of Uncle Laka, accompanied by a stranger dressed in black, gradually pushes this admired man into silence.
- Episode 7 · The Sacrifice — His father locks himself away and talks to invisible presences, a traditional healer steps in, and Ike and his sister Régine must choose between the hospital and the village, a decision that haunts him for years.
- Episode 8 · The Meningioma — She looks back on her parents' story, the SAT association and the confession of her mother, who is convinced she is being persecuted by occult forces. The volume sets faith, fear and medicine against one another around a single question: what should we believe?
- Episode 9 · The Mask — He describes the smiling shell he built to survive, then the funeral in the village, where the arrival of Paul and the members of the circle leads to a night of supernatural confrontation.
- Episode 10 · The Lady in White — Between Yaoundé, Brussels, Paris and Lyon, he becomes her carer, questions his faith and finally draws close to the mystery of the lady in white.
Contact
julientiambo@ymail.com
Updated on 17 October 2026 · By Steve Tiambo, author