Novel
L'Incarcéré
Not translated into English
Yves-Emmanuel Dogbé · 1980
Synopsis
Sénam and his friend Adri, scholarship students from Sachelle, an African country ruled by a general, are studying in Paris. Because he criticises the regime, Sénam loses his scholarship and lives by his pen, while Adri, cautious, pursues his economics studies and urges him in vain to moderate his attacks. Back home, Sénam obtains a post as a teacher, and the Minister of Culture invites him to prepare a speech for the festival of Black arts in Lagos; this text lands him in a cell, where he discovers at close quarters the regime he had denounced from afar.
Context
The novel appeared in Paris in 1980 from Akpagnon, the publishing house the author had founded the year before, and was reissued in 2004. It is drawn from his own imprisonment: he had been arrested in Lomé over a paper, “Civilisation noire et devenir de l'Afrique”, intended for the Lagos festival, and held at the gendarmerie camp; an extract appeared in English as early as June 1980 in Index on Censorship. Raymond Elaho read it in 1981 as a novel at once autobiographical, political and amorous, the first part of which describes Paris like a guidebook, and in which the hero challenges the policy of authenticity that imposed African names.
Who it is for
A novel of about two hundred pages, in French; the author transposes into it his own detention in the prisons of Eyadéma's Togo.
Prizes and reception
Probably the best known of its author's novels, hailed as a committed novel; Dogbé received the grand literary prize of Black Africa in 2002 for his body of work as a whole.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.