Novel · A way to begin
La République des imberbes
Not translated into English
Mohamed Toihiri · 1985
Synopsis
Mercenaries led by a certain John Ménard put to sea to seize President Guigoz, whom they find drunk in his residence on the beach. The novel then goes back over his life: the schoolboy who extorted the smaller children, the politician who hands out ministries to play the factions against one another until he holds absolute power, the leader who abolishes the administration and its archives, hunts down sorcerers while consulting his own, and surrounds himself with very young people.
Context
Published in 1985 in Paris by L'Harmattan, in the Encres noires series, with the subtitle “roman comorien”, it is the first novel written by a Comorian. Under invented names, it transposes the regime of Ali Soilih, from 1975 to 1978, and mixes into it the massacre of the Comorians of Madagascar, whose survivors who returned to the archipelago were nicknamed “Sabenas”, after an airline. A Comorian writer reads in it the story of a revolutionary regime adrift; an article in Africiné sees in it the novel with a historical dimension that opened the door to many manuscripts left in drawers.
Who it is for
A satirical novel in French; it reads better if one knows what the years 1975 to 1978 were in the Comoros.
Prizes and reception
It received the Prix des Mascareignes et des Comores, and the writer Salim Hatubou says it gave rise to his vocation.
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