Novel
Faralako, roman d'un petit village africain
Not translated into English
Émile Cissé · 1958
Synopsis
The book depicts the peaceful life of a small African village, Faralako, in the fifties, and through it the political, social and cultural problems of the colonised countries: the role of the elite, the relation between progress and tradition, the emancipation of Africa, and the fate of the mixed-race children whom their white father abandons to their African mother.
Context
The novel appeared in 1958, the year of Guinea's independence, at the author's expense from Mamou, with a preface by Saïfoulaye Diallo, a figure of the Democratic Party of Guinea. It was reissued in 2006 in Paris by L'Harmattan, in the Écrire l'Afrique series, then in a digital edition. Its title page also bears the motto Liberté dans la paix, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France holds a digitised copy of it.
Who it is for
For discovering the beginnings of the French-language Guinean novel, at the moment of independence.
Prizes and reception
Britannica cites it among the first novels of Guinea, which confront African tradition with Western technology.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.