Novel
La Révolte d'Affiba
Not translated into English
Régina Yaou · 1985
Synopsis
In Abidjan, Affiba, an educated young woman, is married to Koffi. He takes a mistress and leaves the marital home. After his death, his family, in keeping with custom, wants to seize the couple's property and strip the widow of everything. Affiba refuses and rebels against this arbitrariness and against the traditions that justify it.
Context
The author's second novel, it appeared in 1985 in Abidjan with Nouvelles Éditions Africaines and was reissued in 1997. Like the whole of the author's work, it deals with modern life and the place of women in Ivorian society, here in the face of customs that deprive them of their rights. The rest of Affiba's struggle is told in another novel, Le Prix de la révolte, in 1997. The book has not been translated into English.
Who it is for
To read about a heroine who stands up to her in-laws and to the weight of custom, in the Côte d'Ivoire of her time.
Prizes and reception
Fraternité Matin regards it as her best-known novel; academic critics read it in the light of postcolonial feminism.