Novel
Mission to Kala
Mission terminée
Mongo Beti · 1957
Synopsis
Having failed his baccalauréat, Jean-Marie Medza returns to the village, where he dreads his father. The patriarch Bikokolo immediately sends him to Kala to bring back the wife of his cousin Niam, who has left home, and he goes there on the chief's bicycle. At Kala, his uncle and his cousin Zambo present him as a marvel: he is feted, consulted about the town as an authority, showered with gifts of which the uncle keeps half. He hides that he has never known a girl, learns to drink with three young men of the village and falls in love with the very young Edima.
Context
The novel was published in Paris in 1957 by Buchet-Chastel, a year after Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba, and Peter Green translated it into English as early as 1958 under the title Mission to Kala, reissued in Heinemann's African series. Readers note in it the tension between tradition and the modern school, the conflict between father and son, the pull of the town against that of the village. Britannica sees in it an attack on French colonial policy, through a young man whom the villagers revere for his studies and who nevertheless feels a stranger to their life.
Who it is for
In French, in the first person. It helps to know that in the village a wife's return is settled before the chief's tribunal.
Prizes and reception
Prix Sainte-Beuve in 1958, shared that year with an essay by Jean Cathelin on Marcel Aymé.
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