Novel
Essential Encounters
Rencontres essentielles
Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury · 1969
Synopsis
In Cameroon, a small villa is hastily whitewashed to be rented to a French couple who have just arrived; the narrator's father meets their every wish, and the children get a slap each time their games disturb the tenants' siesta. Grown up, Florence marries Joël. But the child does not come, and this impossibility gradually drives her away from her husband, in a story of love, of a marriage in danger and of adultery that the narrator relates in a calm, detached voice.
Context
The novel appeared in 1969, published by the author herself in Paris, in 125 pages; she dates it herself to 1968. L'Harmattan reissued it in 1995, and the Modern Language Association published it in 2002 in its series of texts and translations, with an English version and an introduction by Cheryl Toman. The American publisher presents it as the first novel by a woman from French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa. The critic A.-C. Jaccard praises its calm voice reporting shattering facts; others read in it the social problems arising from the move from countryside to city.
Who it is for
In French, a short book, also readable in English. It is best to know what it meant at the time, for a wife, not to give an heir.
Prizes and reception
No prize found. The book has gone through three editions in thirty-three years, the last accompanied by its English translation.
Sources for this page 3
The pages consulted to check this page.