Novel
Le Collier de coquillages
Not translated into English
Ibrahima Mamadou Ouane · 1957
Synopsis
Georges, a young Frenchman, becomes a colonial administrator in French Sudan. He has to settle difficult cases there, while his wife, who intends to enjoy her rank as the wife of a commandant de cercle, does not understand the high idea he has of his duty. The story is at once a love story, an adventure story and a portrait of the colony.
Context
The novel was printed in 1957 in Andrézieux, the year in which an essay by the author on Islam also appeared in Avignon. Long unobtainable, it was reissued in 2008, in 94 pages, by La Sahélienne and L'Harmattan, and the reissue was presented to the public on 29 March 2008 at the Palais de la culture in Bamako, in the presence of the author's family. The publisher's presentation describes it as “a work of pure imagination”, of which only the setting and atmosphere are authentic.
Who it is for
A short novel, in French, of fewer than one hundred pages in its reissue, which also reads as a portrait of colonial society.
Prizes and reception
Left in obscurity for half a century, the book was relaunched in Bamako in 2008 as the work of a forerunner of Malian letters.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.