Novel
La Mouche et la glu
Not translated into English
Maurice Okoumba-Nkoghé · 1984
Synopsis
In a village in Gabon, between the bush and the backwater, two teenagers, Nyota and Amando, love each other. A forced marriage threatens their love, and they refuse to yield to the forces that league against them: N'Gombi, M'Poyo, a man of power and head of a militia, and Samabi, a master of black magic. An old man, a child and the mother are their accomplices. In this world of repression, a military convoy runs over little Opagha, Amando's younger brother, without stopping.
Context
The novel was published in Paris in 1984 by Présence africaine. Sima Eyi ranks it among the first Gabonese novels to show scenes of life in the city, at a time when the village almost alone occupies the novel of the country; a history of the Gabonese novel reads in it a repressive, prison-like world, where the conflict between tradition and modernity matters more than political criticism, in a symbolic geography dominated by the mountain. Patrice Gahungu studied its poetics of the sun in 2003, and Fortunat Obiang Essono devotes a chapter to it in 2006.
Who it is for
A novel of 268 pages, in French, following two adolescents in love who face the powerful men of their village.
Prizes and reception
According to Jean René Ovono Mendame, the book that best revealed its author to the public; his publisher keeps it in its catalogue of classics.
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