Novel
Opération Marigot
Not translated into English
Koffi Gomez · 1982
Synopsis
To Tonou, a village in the interior of Togo, comes Operation Marigot, a project of the green revolution, the agricultural policy then championed by the regime: a white man and his guide, off-road vehicles, a borehole and wells to be dug in the lowland. Centred on two villagers, Komlan and Kodjo, the novel shows what the irruption of Western culture does to the peasants, the healer and the sacred forest, when the administration and the village elders do not speak the same language.
Context
The novel appeared in 1982 from the Nouvelles Éditions africaines. Its author, a geographer, was then working in the development administration: he wrote about rural development policy from inside the very machinery that carried it out, in the days of the “return to authenticity”. The critic Martin Dossou Gbenouga reads in it the failure of Christianity before animism, which he ascribes to the whites' contempt for Africans, and notes the place held in it by the Mono, a river both material and spiritual. Researchers in Lomé have since studied it.
Who it is for
A short novel, in French, which can also be read as a document on rural Togo and on the major agricultural projects of its time.
Prizes and reception
First Eyadéma literary prize in 1986, which made its author known to the general public; the book has remained his most frequently cited title.
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