Georges Ngal: L’Errance [Wandering]

errance

The latest addition to my website is Georges Ngal‘s L’Errance [Wandering]. This is a follow-up to his Giambatista Viko ou Le Viol du discours africain [Giambatista Viko or the Rape of African Discourse]. Like its predecessor, it is both a mockery of current views of African culture, particularly by Africans, as well as proposals for improving the situation. In the previous book, our two heroes, Giambatista Viko and Niaiseux, were condemned for their betrayal of African culture. We now learn they have been condemned to spend much time in convents of African culture. Their sentence has now finished and they are in the fictitious town of Marmonia, writing an account of their adventures for a major daily newspaper. Virtually the entire novel consists of discussions between the two about the problems with African culture and the perceptions of African culture and what to do to improve it. It does make for interesting reading, even if still written in the rather high blown French of the previous novel, but it does not really read like a novel and, as such, must be accounted a failure. The fact that it is out of print and has not been translated tends to bear this out.

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