Essay
L'Étau
Not translated into English
Aminata Dramane Traoré · 1999
Synopsis
A book that is part chronicle, part essay and part political appeal. The author describes the weight of debt on African countries and the role of the international financial institutions, whose structural adjustment plans impoverish the populations in her view, and rejects a democracy regulated from outside. She defends the cultural singularity of the continent and calls on Africans to take back in hand the decisions that concern them.
Context
The essay appeared from Actes Sud in 1999, in 190 pages, under the full title L'Étau. L'Afrique dans un monde sans frontières, while its author was a minister; the back cover presents it as “a cry of alarm and a political plea”. It follows a first book on African women facing structural adjustment, published by the same house in 1995, and opens a series of essays on Africa and globalisation published in the two thousands.
Who it is for
A short essay, in French, of fewer than two hundred pages, between testimony and argument.
Prizes and reception
No known prize; the book made its author one of the African voices critical of globalization.