The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction by M. A. Orthofer

Author:M. A. Orthofer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LIT012000, Literary Criticism/Reference, LIT007000, Literary Criticism/Books & Reading
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2016-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

KEEP IN MIND

• Mohammed Naseehu Ali’s (b. 1971) collection of stories about Ghana and Ghanaians in the United States is entitled The Prophet of Zongo Street (2005).

CÔTE D’IVOIRE

All of Ahmadou Kourouma’s (1927–2003) few novels are political, ranging from his first, The Suns of Independence (1968, revised 1970, English 1981), about the transition from colonialism to independence, to one of the major child-soldier tales to come out of Africa, Allah Is Not Obliged (2000, English 2007). A Malinké, Kourouma has skillfully incorporated his native language and storytelling into his fiction. For example, the title of his novel Monnew (1990, English 1993), representing the defiance and contempt that dominates it, is a Malinké term with no exact French (or English) equivalent.

Kourouma’s novels are set in fictional West African countries, yet the real-life counterparts of both the nations and their rulers are often readily identifiable. His finest achievement is the satirical Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals (1998, English 2001, and as Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote, 2003), which brings together many of Africa’s worst despots in a gathering to reflect on the life and sing the praises of a dictator named Koyaga, a thinly veiled portrait of Togo’s Gnassingbé Eyadema. The presentation, in the form of this very traditional gathering and ritual accounting of Koyaga’s life and feats, mixing fantastical embellishments and horrifying realism, produces a devastating critique of both Eyadema’s rule and, in the many asides, his fellow despots. It is, along with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow, the strongest—and funniest—satirical novel to come out of Africa.

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