French Guiana (France) / All works
Novel
The Bastards
Les Bâtards
Bertène Juminer · 1961
Synopsis
A Guianese student lives in the Paris of the thirties, in exile, then returns home and seeks his place in a deeply unequal colonial society, undermined by petty rivalries, the scramble for small powers, self-hatred and the acceptance of alienation. He says he is colonised, deprived of a recognised history, and comes to define himself with his own people as bastards, born of a Gaulish father and an African mother, doubly depersonalised by culture and by history.
Context
The novel appeared in Paris in 1961 from Présence africaine, with a preface by Aimé Césaire, who gave the young author criticism and advice in it; it was reissued in 1977. Juminer published it while still a young doctor, starting from his own misadventures in France, and followed it in 1963 with Au seuil d'un nouveau cri, then in 1968 with La Revanche de Bozambo, in which a colonizing Africa governs a subjugated Europe. Keith Q. Warner translated it into English in 1989.
Who it is for
A short novel, close to an essay, made up of dialogues and reflections on the condition of the colonised.
Prizes and reception
Its author regarded it as the first novel to analyse the situation of the student of colour and his place in colonial society.
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