From Africa: New Francophone Stories

Bibliographical Essay

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 [First Page] [137], (1) Lines: 0 to 16 ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [137], (1) Bibliographical Essay Several anthologies of African short fiction, although primarily devoted to work written in English, include stories translated from French. Charles Larson’s first, Opaque Shadows (Washington dc: Inscape, 1975), includes two Francophone stories, both by authors of an earlier generation — Ousmane Sembène and Camara Laye. The second, Under African Skies (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992), includes these two authors and also Véronique Tadjo. African Short Stories (1985) and Contemporary African Short Stories (1992), both edited by Chinua Achebe and C. L. Innes, are published by Heinemann, London, a major English-language publisher of African fiction. The second volume includes a story by Emmanuel Dongala, a writer from Congo-Brazzaville. A more recent collection, The Picador Book of African Stories, edited by Stephen Gray (London: Macmillan, 2000), has a broader scope, containing stories originally written in several languages, including those by seven writers from francophone Africa, among them Abdourahman A. Waberi and Michèle Rakotoson. In French an early anthology is Anthologie africaine d’expression française, 137 Bibliographical Essay 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 [138], (2 Lines: 16 ——— 0.0pt P ——— Normal P PgEnds: T [138], (2 volume 1, Le roman et la nouvelle, edited by Jacques Chevrier (Paris: Hatier, 1981), which, as the title indicates, includes excerpts from novels as well as short stories by several authors born before 1940 — Francis Bebey, Henri Lopes, Guillaume Oyono-Mbia, and Ousmane Sembène. More recent anthologies include Nouvelles voix d’Afrique, edited by Michel Le Bris (Paris: Hoëbeke, 2002). This volume contains stories by Kossi Efoui, Jean-Luc Raharimanana, and Abdourahman A. Waberi. An interesting collection of stories about childhood, Une enfance outremer, by authors from various regions of the francophone world, edited by Leïla Sebbar (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2001), includes stories by Kossi Efoui, Jean-Luc Raharimanana, Véronique Tadjo, and Abdourahman A. Waberi. Volumes of short stories by single authors in French include writers of earlier generations. One of the first was Ousmane Socé’s Contes et légendes d’Afrique noire (Dakar: Éditions Gensul et Garcin, 1935), a collection of tales and legends rather than modern short stories. Perhaps the best writer of African tales is Birago Diop, whose Contes d’Amadou Koumba (Paris: Fasquelle, 1957) has been translated into English by Dorothy Blair as Tales of Amadou Koumba (London: Oxford University Press, 1966). Bernard Dadié, the most influential writer from Côte d’Ivoire, better known for his plays and semiautobiographical novels, published a number of early collections that are often close to folktales , including Légendes africaines (Paris: Seghers, 1954), Le pagne noir: Contes africains (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1955), and Les jambes du fils de Dieu (Abidjan: ceda-Hatier, 1980). Francis Bebey, from Cameroon, published Embarras et cie: Nouvelles et poèmes in Yaoundé with Éditions cle (1968). cle, a publishing house affiliated with Christian missionaries in Cameroon, has published several volumes of stories, among them Tribaliques by Henri Lopes, a Congolese writer who later became well known as a novelist. The Senegalese writer Ousmane Sembène, now best known as a filmmaker, published several volumes of stories with Présence Africaine, including Voltaïque (1962) and Vehi-Ciosane, ou 138 Bibliographical Essay 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 [139], (3) Lines: 20 to 2 ——— * 235.28pt P ——— Normal Page * PgEnds: PageB [139], (3) Blanche Genèse, suivi du Mandat (1965). Emmanuel Dongala’s Jazz et vin de palme et autres nouvelles (Paris: Hatier, 1982) is an excellent collection. Several writers represented in this anthology have also published volumes of stories. In Michèle Rakotoson’s Dadabé (Paris: Karthala, 1984) the title story is a novella, followed by shorter pieces. Kangni Alem’s La gazelle s’agenouille pour pleurer (Paris: Éditions Acoria, 2000) contains a varied group of stories. Jean-Luc Raharimanana has had two collections of stories published...