Narrative
Strength and Goodness
Force-Bonté
Bakary Diallo · 1926
Synopsis
A young Fulani shepherd from northern Senegal loses his herd and, with it, his place among his people. He goes down to Saint-Louis, enlists in the colonial army in 1911 and spends years in Morocco, until the declaration of war. Landed at Sète, he goes up to the front; a shell fragment hits him in the jaw. Long months in hospital follow, from Épernay to Paris, where he learns French; he leaves it to serve as an interpreter with the tirailleurs.
Context
Lucie Cousturier, already ill, took the manuscript to Rieder, but died without having been able to finish the corrections she wanted to make to it. Jean-Richard Bloch, who directed the Témoignages series, revised the text and signed a notice dated April 1926, whose existence the writer learned of only after publication; a preface by a professor friend had been planned. The archives of the firm were destroyed during the Second World War. In 1985, the Dakar reissue, with a preface by Mohamadou Kane, cast doubt on the authorship of the book; the study of the writer's letters shows him, on the contrary, to be both author and poet.
Who it is for
A narrative in the present tense, in short chapters and limpid language. One has to accept the stance of a narrator whom several readers have judged too admiring of colonisation.
Prizes and reception
The first account of the Great War left by a Senegalese tirailleur. Long out of print, it reappeared in 1985, then in English in 2021.
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