Tale
Les Fables de Douala
Not translated into English
Isaac Moumé Etia · 1930
Synopsis
Fables of the Douala people, given in two languages, French and Douala, with an illustration and a portrait of the author. These short tales condense popular wisdom into stories that are easy to remember, and the collection adds traditional religious texts, news items and marvellous tales; among the animals, the tortoise plays the part of cunning.
Context
The collection appears in 1930, printed in Bergerac, in two languages, with the portrait of its author, and the catalogue of the Bibliothèque nationale de France records it as a first volume. Eloise Brière ranks it among the texts based on the folklore of the first Cameroonian writers. In his preface, the author explains that the tortoise, wudu in Duala, plays in the tales of the country the role that the fox plays in those of Europe; Le Bulletin mensuel colonial hailed the same year a monument of folklore. Patrice Kayo returns to these fables in his anthology of 2000.
Who it is for
In French and in Duala, short fables. It is worth knowing that writing in the languages of the country had been banned in 1921 by the administration.
Prizes and reception
No prize found. Eloise Brière counts it among the first books by Cameroonian writers, earlier than the literature of the post-colonial period.