French Guiana (France) / All works
Novel
Batouala: A True Black Novel
Batouala, véritable roman nègre
René Maran · 1921
Synopsis
Near Grimari, in Ubangi-Shari, Batouala, the powerful chief of a Banda village, prepares the great feast of the ga'nzas, the initiation rites, and then the hunting season. He hates the whites, the “boundjous”, who levy taxes, requisition and conscript. One of his wives, Yassigui'ndja, attracts the young Bissibi'ngui, and jealousy takes hold of the chief. Drawing on Banda vocabulary, proverbs and songs, the narrative follows a few days in the village, at the pace of the animals, the bush and the seasons.
Context
The book appeared in Paris in 1921 from Albin Michel, after six years of work. Its preface, of about ten pages, attacks colonisation, the famine and the depopulation it produces: “Civilisation, civilisation, pride of the Europeans”. It earned the author trouble with the Ministry of the Colonies, and the book was banned in the French colonies in 1928. Revised in 1937, the preface invokes Gide's Voyage au Congo, published ten years earlier, which had proved it right.
Who it is for
A short novel, in a dense language mixed with Banda words; the preface can be read separately and is closer to a pamphlet.
Prizes and reception
Prix Goncourt 1921, the first awarded to a Black writer, it caused a scandal and paved the way for the writers of négritude.
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