Novel
La Carte d'identité
Not translated into English
Jean-Marie Adiaffi · 1980
Synopsis
Mélédouman, an old Agni prince, is arrested by the commandant of the district because he cannot produce his identity card. Beaten and ill-treated, he obtains a week to find the document. Guided by his granddaughter, Ebah Ya, he then undertakes a search across the country that confronts him with the arbitrariness of the colonial administration and, more deeply, with the question of what makes up his identity.
Context
The novel appeared in 1980, co-published in Paris by Hatier and in Abidjan by the Centre d'édition et de diffusion africaines, in the Monde noir poche series. Its writing mixes narrative, poetry and philosophical reflection, what the author called the “genre without genre”, and draws on Agni culture; critics read in it a quest for identity carried out through the symbolism of an initiation. Khaled Elraz, in 2000, saw in it a modern fable of the clash between systems of values too far apart from one another.
Who it is for
A novel of about one hundred and sixty pages, in French, reissued in paperback in 1992 and in 2002.
Prizes and reception
Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire in 1981, awarded jointly to this novel and to a poetry collection by the same author.
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