Novel
It Shall Be of Jasper and Coral
Elle sera de jaspe et de corail
Werewere Liking · 1983
Synopsis
A sharp-minded narrator, who calls herself a misovir and does not like men, keeps a journal organised around nine themes, in which the voices of two men answer one another. Through this journal, she sets about imagining a new people, a race of jasper and coral freed from the historical burdens of patriarchy and colonisation, and undoes the myths that weigh on relations between the sexes in order to forge others, through a kind of ritual purification.
Context
The book was published in Paris by L'Harmattan, in 156 pages, under a subtitle that presents it as the diary of a misovire, and invents its genre, the chant-roman. Marjolijn de Jager translated it into English in 2000 for the University Press of Virginia, together with another novel by its author and an introduction by Irène Assiba d'Almeida; the publisher sees in it a satire of the patriarchal vision of African society and a radical experiment with the form of the novel. Eunice Fombele, of the University of Buea, reads in it in 2016 a misovire consciousness that draws on the catharsis of Bassa rituals.
Who it is for
In French. Neither novel nor poem in the ordinary sense: better to let oneself be carried by the voices than to look for a continuous plot.
Prizes and reception
No prize for this book; the word coined in its subtitle, misovire, has become a notion discussed by critics.
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