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COPYRIGHT 2002 Indiana University Press
by Andre Djiffack. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2000. 289 pp.
In the field of African literature, if the value of authors were to be measured by the honors they have reaped, Mongo Beti would easily be considered a minor author. Yet the quality of production of the francophone Cameroonian author of Le pauvre Christ de Bomba would suggest that he is one of the black continent's best. It is also clear that the domain of African literature presents a certain number of specific traits: its relative youth; the paucity of its resources; its weak and rare author-reader interaction; the merit of its leading figures who have attained international renown; and especially its dependence upon production and distribution structures that still remain under the control of the former metropolises, due to underdevelopment.
Mongo Beti's uniqueness lies therefore in that genius, which will likely never enjoy more than posthumous honors, for the activist, teacher, writer, critic, editor, journalist, bookseller to whom Andre Djiffack devotes his second study belongs to that small number of accursed authors of the French-speaking world. Just as Aime Cesaire, the "fundamental black," has little chance of ever becoming a member of the French Academy, following in the...
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