The African Child

by Camara Laye, James Kirkup (Translator)

This book is a distinct and graceful memoir of Camara Laye's youth in the village of Koroussa, French Guinea, a place steeped in mystery. Laye marvels over this mother's supernatural powers, his father's distinction as the village goldsmith, and his own passage into manhood, which is marked by animistic beliefs and bloody rituals of primeval origin.

Genres: Africa, France, Nonfiction, Memoir, Guinea, African Literature, Classics

159 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

During his time at college he wrote The African Child (L'Enfant noir), a novel based loosely on his own childhood. He would later become a writer of many essays and was a foe of the government of Guinea. His novel The Radiance of the King (Le Regard du roi) is considered to be one of his most important works.

He was born Malinke (a Mandé speaking ethnicity) into a caste that traditionally worked as blacksmiths and goldsmiths. His family name is Camara, and following the tradition of his community, it precedes his given name—Laye. His mother was from the village of Tindican, and his immediate childhood surroundings were not predominantly influenced by French culture. He attended both the Koranic and French elementary schools in Kouroussa. At age fifteen he went to Conakry, capital of Guinea, to continue his education. He attended vocational studies in motor mechanics. In 1947, he travelled to Paris to continue studies in mechanics. There he worked and took further courses in engineering and worked towards the baccalauréat.

In 1953, he published his first novel, L'Enfant noir (The African Child, 1954, also published under the title The Dark Child), an autobiographical story, which narrates in the first person a journey from childhood in Kouroussa, through challenges in Conakry, to France. The book won the Prix Charles Veillon in 1954. L'Enfant noir was followed by Le Regard du roi (1954; The Radiance of the King, 1956). These two novels are among the very earliest major works in francophone African literature.The Radiance of the King was described by Kwame Anthony Appiah as "One of the greatest of the African novels of the colonial period."
In 1956, Camara returned to Africa, first to Dahomey (now Benin), then Gold Coast (now Ghana) and then to newly independent Guinea, where he held government posts. In 1965, he left Guinea for Dakar, Senegal because of political issues, never to return. In 1966 his third novel, Dramouss (A Dream of Africa, 1968), was published. In 1978 his fourth and final work was published, Le Maître de la parole - Kouma Lafôlô Kouma (The Guardian of the Word, 1980), based on a Malian epic, as told by the griot Babou Condé, about the famous Sundiata Keita (also spelled Sunjata), the thirteenth-century founder of the Mali Empire.

Camara died in 1980 in Dakar, Senegal of a kidney infection.

Reviews

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a classic of African literature from 1954. It’s not a novel but an autobiography of a boy growing up in French Guinea in West Africa, now the independent Republic of Guinea. It reminds me a lot of two other books set in West Africa that I read recently: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and Agatha Moudio’s Son by Francis Bebey.



The boy grows up relatively well off in his village because his father is a blacksmith and goldsmith. We learn about traditional customs endangered by modernization. The boy is taught, for example, that a snake that lives in a hole in the wall of his father’s workshop represents his ancestors. When a woman comes to have a gold brooch made from gold dust she has panned from the river, she brings along a man who plays a harp and sings the praises of the smith before they negotiate the deal.

His father has apprentices who live in their house and the boy befriends some and learns from them. Meanwhile he is bullied, even terrorized, by older boys at school.

He goes to a neighboring village to live with his grandmother in the summer and he compares rural and village life. The author emphasizes the dignity of rural people.

A major event of his life is circumcision, a long elaborate ritual with six weeks of recovery. Of course the boy is terrified.

The boy goes to Conakry, the big city and capital, to attend a technical school. He lives with an uncle's family and experiences his first love and the death of one of his best friends. He does so well at school that he receives a scholarship to go to college in Paris. Despite all his reassurances, his mother is devastated at what she knows will be his eventual loss to her.

The author (1928-1980) wrote a couple of other novels and he did return to West Africa in his late twenties to work in government positions in Guinea and some neighboring countries. However he eventually got into political trouble in his home country and was not able to return.



It's a very readable book with a good story and again, an autobiography, not a novel. It’s almost anthropological in its detail of customs, rituals, ceremonies and religious beliefs.

Photo of Conakry from worldatlas.com
Photo of the author from bedetheque.com

[✨ Helena ✨ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh bien ... je n'ai pas vraiment aimé ce livre. Cela a bien commencé, mais l'intrigue est devenue inintéressante. Deux chapitres entiers ont été consacrés aux circoncisions ... EWWW! Cependant, je dois dire que j'ai apprécié la fin. C'était un livre bien écrit, mais l'intrigue ne m'intéressait pas du tout.

Traduit en anglais:
Well ... I didn't really like this book. It began well, but the plot became uninteresting. Two entire chapters were devoted to circumcisions ... EWWW! However, I must say that I appreciated the ending. This was a well written novel, but the plot did not interest me at all.

[leynes · Rating 1 out of 5]

I actually feel bad for this rating but this is HANDS DOWN the most boring book I've ever read in my entire life. And I've read The Old Man and the Sea.

220 pages. Took me four months to get through. Only upside is that reading it brought me closer to my goal of reading 12 books in French this year.

The Dark Child is Camara Laye's first novel, published in Paris in 1953. Considered "one of the founding texts of contemporary African literature", this largely autobiographical work received the 1954 Charles Veillon Prize and inspired a 1995 film of the same name, directed by Laurent Chevallier.

In The Dark Child we follow Laye, a young boy living with his parents in Kouroussa, a village in Upper Guinea. His father, a blacksmith and silversmith, teaches him the techniques of his art, but doesn't necessarily want him to take over the family's business; he wants better for his son and sees education as the only way to secure his future. In Kouroussa, Laye goes to a French school, where he consistently belongs to the best of his class.

During the book, Laye sometimes visits his grandmother who lives in Tindican, a neighboring village, where he – with growing age – discovers the difference between the peasantry and those folks who live in the big(ger) cities.

As an uninitiated teenager, Laye has to undergo the rites of circumcision at some point, which is an essentia tradition in the culture of his people. A large chunk of The Dark Child is focused on the rites of circumcision and what this transition from boy- to manhood means to the boys who undergo it.

The last part of the book is focused on Laye's studies in Conakry, Guinea's capital city, where he obtains a vocational certificate and is offered the opportunity to continue his studies in France. After allaying his mother's doubts, Laye accepts the offer and the book ends with him on a plane to Paris.

The Dark Child is a well-known African novel that is widely studied in European schools. This success can be explained by the youth of the hero (it's basically a coming of age tale) and by the fact that Camara Laye tried to make African culture as "accessible" as possible by describing a peaceful Africa, without evoking the violence of colonialism.

And whilst this might appeal to European class rooms, it wasn't for me. The book felt quite inauthentic as it avoided the subject of colonialism and French rule of Guinea altogether. I also didn't enjoy (even though I understand why it was "necessary" at the time) that Laye's whole message basically was: African people aren't savages, they're just human beings like Europeans. UGH. It's just sad that African writers (especially back in the day) had no other choice but to write for European audiences and adhere to their gaze and expectations.

The whole book is just so basic and useless. I didn't learn anything new (bc everything is hella superficial with no care for actual detail), and the writing overall was lacking. Like I said, I never read a more boring book. Everything was soooooo descriptive. This whole book was a huge TELL, not show. There was no introspective, nor a reason for the plot to move forward ... it was all so senseless??? None of the characters felt real because we didn't get to know them AT ALL. They were like cardboard copies. And I shit you not, nothing really happens in this book??? Laye really just wrote it to show Europeans that Africans are peaceful, with no care for an actual, interesting plot.

Laye's lack of political commitment in a period of anti-colonial struggle (I mean this book was written in the 50s after all – during a time when Memmi published fucking The Colonizer and the Colonized) earned him some criticism though, most famously from Cameroonian author Mongo Beti, who shared his grievances in a famous article published in "Présence africaine" in 1954. Other African writers, though, came to Laye's defense, stating that African writers should write as aesthetes, and not as sociologists or historians. [Oscar, is that you?]

But no matter which side you're on, there is no denying that The Dark Child is just overall lacking as a novel. I cannot imagine anyone of you enjoying it... therefore, funnily enough, it is the perfect book for a curriculum. Oh gosh, how I would've hated reading that book in school ... it would've fit right in with all the other trash books our teachers made us read bc they would be "oh so relatable" and "teach us so much" – whilst all they did in actuality was make me rage!

[Emmkay · Rating 3 out of 5]

A coming-of-age memoir of a young man in Guinea, first published in 1954 when the author was studying in France, his departure for which is the culmination of the narrative. Young Laye grows up the eldest son of a blacksmith, sleeping in his mother’s hut in the town of Kouroussa and visiting his relatives in the country, where he helps gather the harvest. He writes about his experiences in school, relationships with his family, the interwoven animism and Islam that support life in the community, and key moments in his development, including a night of ceremony for uncircumcised boys and, eventually, his circumcision (rather harrowing, though the casual reference to a parallel excision ceremony for girls was more so).

There’s no explicit dealing with the colonial context - it’s about a boy growing up - but it still feels very much of its time, in the revolution of the colonial periphery around the metropole, the casual and uncomfortable use of ‘White Man’ as a flattering descriptor, and the firm insistence of the author on the dignity of those he grew up around. I read online that there is now some question as to whether he wrote the book himself, but I don’t know what sparked that discussion, and would like to learn more. In any case, I enjoyed it and liked learning more about a place and time I knew little about. 3.5.

[Carol Dobson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving autobiographical account. Camara Laye wrote it in 1954 while studying in France. It is a child's view of his world which gradually becomes larger as he grows. He wants to stay where he is but knows his education will take him to a different land. Beautifully written.

[lise.charmel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una storia di formazione di un ragazzino nero dell'Alta Guinea che segue un percorso di crescita tra superstizione, amicizia, affetti familiari, riti di iniziazione, ma anche stagionali, feste e studio. Dalla città in cui è nato alla capitale Conakry, facendosi sempre onore con il suo impegno nello studio e grazie al suo buon carattere che lo porta a ricevere l'affetto di molti.
E' un memoir molto sentimentale, non nel senso di sdolcinato, ma nel senso che è ricco di sentimenti, prevalentemente (forse quasi troppo) di buoni sentimenti e di amore. Scritto in maniera semplice, riesce tuttavia a trasmettere al lettore tutti i sentimenti positivi di cui è portatore e anche questo non è semplice.
Ai tempi fu duramente criticato da altri scrittori di origine africana perché non denunciava le atrocità del colonialismo e anzi mostrava un mondo troppo roseo e poco autentico. A distanza di anni possiamo dire che si tratta di un ottimo libro (benché non di denuncia), che fa piacere leggere anche ai giorni nostri.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fairly short and simple autobiographical account of a boy growing up in Guinea in the 1930s and 40s. Camara Laye wrote it in 1954 while studying in France, and you can feel the nostalgia for his homeland. Although the writing style is quite understated, the emotion is communicated quite effectively, and it’s very moving in places.

As the title suggests, the book only deals with his childhood, and it is faithful to a child’s outlook on the world. At the start, his entire world is the veranda around his father’s hut. Then it gradually expands to the rest of the concession, then to school, the town of Kourassa, then the wider country of Guinea when he goes off to study in the capital Conakry. Finally the link with childhood is severed altogether as he gets on a plane to France.

The mixture of pain and excitement at each stage of growing up is beautifully rendered. He wants to be part of his family, to follow his father as a blacksmith or his uncle as a farmer, but always knows that his success in school is moving him further away from that. He is being marked out for a different future, his family are sacrificing to give him something better, and he wants that, but also wants to stay where he is. His parents, too, are caught in this conflict of wanting him to succeed but knowing that his success means his departure from their lives.

Quite a bit of time is spent describing the circumcision rite, which may be of anthropological interest to some, but was for me more interesting as a symbol of the other changes he goes through in the book, the pain and fear at something new, the loss of the old, but also the anticipation of being a man, the pride he feels when he is given his own hut and his own grown-up clothes.

My copy is from 1969, and made me realise a couple of things. First, the introduction emphasises again and again the “dignity” of the protagonist and his family, as if it’s some amazing discovery that Africans can have dignity. Some people of course would still hold similar views, but I’m glad that for most of us today the value of a book like this is no longer in the radical discovery that African people are actually human beings. The second thing I realised is that I need to start buying hardbacks – this paperback literally crumbled in my hands as I read it. Does anyone else have very old paperbacks (60s or earlier)? Do they last?

Anyway, I enjoyed this book as an insight into a life at a moment of great change, starting in a very traditional setting and moving very quickly into different worlds. A lot of the political context is absent – French colonialism, for example, is only a shadowy presence in the book – but I don’t see this as a fault. This is a childhood memoir, and does no more or less than you’d expect: it gives a faithful depiction of the author’s early years. I found it interesting and quite moving.

[khadeeja · Rating 3 out of 5]

does it really count as finishing a book if I only read four chapters... #whatevs i think i would have liked it if i actually read it

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful autobiography that really bought a corner of Africa (Guinea) to life from a village to town, interior to coast. It’s a magical evocation.

[Adsanaa]

I tried to read this book on my own outside of class. I even tried to listen to the audio book at x2 speed. I’m bored so since we finished it in class I’m just gonna say I finished it.

[Monty Milne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this fascinating and very enjoyable. The introduction speaks of the “tone of courteous modesty” – I agree. There is an immense dignity about it all, and it is a very absorbing insight into a completely different culture. It may be an idealised picture, but it is nevertheless a very attractive one. I was particularly interested by the descriptions of some of the ceremonies, such as circumcision, which although ostensibly Muslim seemed to be very pagan, with only a thin veneer of Islam.

It’s true that not a great deal happens. There is only one moment of pathos: (slight spoiler) and that is the death of the narrator’s friend. However, although this is sad, he had been introduced too briefly for the reader to be heavily invested in him.

I can understand why some readers feel bored by this, but as a charming coming of age tale set in a different time and place, I found it delightful.

[Hannalee]

didn't actually pay attention while we read this. i personally found the writing style to make the pacing feel sluggish. this book was also about a boy's coming of age and had a lot of deep themes but i'm a mood reader so this was not it.

no rating cuz i would give it a 2.5 rounded down but it prob deserves better

btw this is a lifesaver if ur "reading" for school

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not much happens in this gentle, sentimental little book, but it’s a pleasant read all the same. There seems to be some disagreement about whether The Dark Child is a memoir or an autobiographical novel; my library shelves it as nonfiction, though given the abundant dialogue, the author clearly took some creative license.

Either way, it’s a nicely-written coming-of-age story of a boy from in a traditional village in Guinea in the 1930s and 40s. There are no atrocities, no violence (except from bullies at school), no political themes: you would not know from Laye’s writing that Guinea was under French rule at the time, gaining its independence only after this book’s publication in the 1950s. Other characters drift in and out of the story, but more than anything it’s the story of the author’s relationship with his own culture. In the first chapter, his mother introduces him to a snake that visits his father in his workshop – “the guiding spirit of our race,” the parents explain. No one sees any conflict between their superstitions, and his mother’s mysterious powers, and their Muslim beliefs. Later chapters are spent on harvest and coming-of-age rituals. Only toward the end does Laye leave the village to study. It’s a nostalgic story, developing at a graceful, measured pace, with perhaps a bit of stereotyping for the benefit of foreign readers, though at the time apparently any portrayal of life in Africa as calm and cheerful was groundbreaking. For that matter, it’s hardly common now.

At any rate, I’m not falling over myself to recommend this, but I enjoyed it and consider it worth reading. A solid 3.5 stars.

[Trotta Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Immense

[Valerie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. An interesting autobiography/memoir in which Camara Laye narrates his years growing up in pre-independence Guinea. I enjoyed the fluid writing, Laye's clear affection for his parents and learning about aspects of Guinean culture (or more specifically Malinke culture). But it remained a bit too much at surface level and I never felt I got a real feeling for who Laye is as a person. It also felt like it was overtly speaking to a white/Western audience; which is, of course, not surprising since the book was first published in 1953 but as a contemporary reader it is a bit jarring (especially those few times where Laye seems to feel he needs to apologise for certain belief systems). But I can see why it is considered an African classic and am glad that I finally read it.

[Janelle Bouman · Rating 3 out of 5]

First book I've read entirely in French, which I'm pretty proud of. It was an easy enough read for someone with 3-4 years of language experience.

[Kuszma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jó, hogy van ez a regény – nagyon jól mutat egy guineai szerző egy Afrika-kihíváshoz. Ez a szöveg engem halványan emlékeztet a kortárs magyar gyerekszemszög-regényekre (a „tyúkszaros gyermekkorom”-regények), amiket például Háy, Borbély vagy (időnként) Grecsó neve fémjelez, bár van némi különbség. Az egyik (a felszínesebb), hogy itt a lurkót nem a kendermagos kakas kergeti körbe az udvaron, hanem a mérgeskígyó. A másik, hogy amíg a magyar verzióban erősen (vagy néha: fölösen) hangsúlyozva van az ifjúkor megalázó, ha úgy tetszik: démoni oldala (optimális esetben megfelelő arányban vegyítve a tündéri aspektusokkal), addig Camara mintha ellopná a dolgok súlyát – valahogy nem érzem, hogy tétje, ereje lenne ennek a szövegnek. Benne van minden ától cettig, narancsfa az udvaron, apai bölcsességek, anyai szeretet, mágia és beavatás, csak egyik sem úgy, hogy meg legyek bűvölődve általuk. Biztos tévedek, de úgy éreztem magam, mintha bugyuta fehérembernek lennék nézve, akinek tárlatvezetést kell tartani guineai kultúrából. Ráadásul nem is egy múzeumban – ez csak egy szuvenírbolt.

[Audrey Approved · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read around the world project - Guinea

The Dark Child is a piece of nonfiction from Camara Laye, who grew up in Guinea as part of the Malinke peoples. Laye wrote this in his twenties when studying in France (it was published in 1954), and the memoir reflects his experiences as a child and adolescent, navigating familial ties, friendships, and perhaps most memorable, the rituals of the Malinke people (including his circumcision as a teen). I found the prose descriptive and eloquent, but The Dark Child lacks an almost any sort of reflection - this is more a chronological regurgitation of events that occurred. For this reason, while the memoir was readable and enlightening, it likely won't stay with me long term.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. An interesting, easy to read, coming of age autobiography about the author growing up in a village in French Guinea in the 1940s. It is a short story about living with sacred traditions and the authors academic success taking him to distant cities.
The author’s father was a blacksmith and a goldsmith. The young boys of the village are circumcised during an event celebrating their becoming men.

This book was first published in 1953.

[Amelia Petty · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a bit to finally understand the language and sentence structure in french, but in hindsight, it was a nice coming-of-age, sweet, cultural memoir and I liked it!

[Aline · Rating 4 out of 5]

L’Enfant Noir retrace l’enfance de l’auteur, Laye Camara, un Malinké de Guinée. Laye nous y raconte avec nostalgie sa douce enfance, troublée en rien, dans son village natal. Une magnifique et enchanteresque immersion dans la campagne guinéenne du début du siècle passé, et ses rites et coutumes traditionnels. C’est bien écrit, touchant, et les personnages sont bienveillants. J’ai dévoré ce petit livre autobiographique!

[Susan Denney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I used several chapters of this book in my 4AP French classes. I have read the book many times. The book has an outlook which is unique. Camara Laye has a foot in two worlds. We see him as a boy in the villages of his father and grandmother. He opens a window for us into a world where spirits reside in every living thing and where a snake can speak and share knowledge with the leader of a clan.

He also shows us his introduction to European science-based culture. And even though the two worlds seem to be mutually exclusive, he does not invalidate one at the expense of the other.

I found it to be thought-provoking. The book allows the reader to question almost all of the givens in the knowledge bank he or she has acquired from Western civilization.
Those who read the book carefully can never fully trust their belief in the inferiority of an animistic culture to their own.

In one memorable chapter, Laye reminds us that politeness and good manners are never more important than in a small village. He shows us that the small group of people in his grandmother's village who knew that they would always have to live and get along with each other developed a code of behavior that provided everyone with respect and dignity.

I have only read this book in French. I have no idea if the English translation comes close to capturing the essence of the book.

[une lectrice quelque part · Rating 2 out of 5]

Je me suis ennuyée tout le long de ma lecture mais c’était intéressant de lire l’enfance d’un guinéen ayant reçu une éducation traditionnelle. Il y a des passages qui m’ont paru invraisemblables et me dire que ces événements ont peut-être été réels me fascine. Je me demande si le fameux serpent par exemple était vraiment "le génie" de son père.
La différence de traitement que sa mère faisait avec ses amis du sexe féminin et masculin m’a beaucoup énervé 😠

P.S: Mais sinon à ma mère est l’une des plus belles dédicaces que j’aie lu 🥹

[Oleksandr Fediienko · Rating 3 out of 5]

У своїх мемуарах Камара Лай згадує дитинство. Колись цілим світом для нього був лише його дім і майстерня батька-золотаря. Щоб золотий виріб вдався найкраще, батько пестив справжню чорну змійку, яка уособлювала їхніх предків, читав закляття, а замовники приводили співців епосу.
Поступово світ малого розширився: він їздив у гості до родичів із села, пішов до школи, потім до технікуму. Насамкінець його покликали продовжити навчання в метрополії – у Франції, що, мабуть, символізує відрив від традиційного ладу і прийняття західних цінностей. Або просто дорослішання і відрив від батьків. Звісно, автор написав книгу ще молодим і не міг знати, що згодом повернеться на батьківщину, щоб розбудовувати новостворену Гвінею та сусідні країни.
В цьому творі цікаво те, що радянський переклад 1991 року передрукували в 2020 році.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful little book. Why it is on the 1001 books to read list is a mystery to me - I thought that was meant to be a list of novels but this is clearly a childhood memoir.

The storytelling is unapologetically sentimental and extremely touching. It is refreshing to read an account of an African childhood not defined by war, the slave trade, famine, or other atrocities. This is a story of family love, deeply entrenched culture and custom, and the pull of a shrinking world in the early / mid 20th century. It's beautifully told and my only complaint is that it isn't longer and more detailed - there are a number of unanswered questions and dynamics here.

[Elise · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, which I read in one sitting, will always be close to my heart. I identified so much with Camara Laye because of my own firsthand experience of leaving my childhood home post-Katrina, during the time of the New Orleans diaspora. His detailed, slice of life account of the enchanting lives of Muslims in the village of Kouroussa(Guinea--French Africa) was very moving. I can't wait to discuss it in my "Literature of the African Diaspora" class!

[Anita Pomerantz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This memoir is an enjoyable read that is a picturesque coming of age story set in Africa. It's simply told without artifice or tremendous elaboration. We follow Laye's story as he is raised by his loving parents, attends primary school, falls for his first love, and finally becomes a man through a ritual circumcision. Unfortunately, the book ends on a bittersweet note and left me wanting more. Nicely rendered, but not likely to be memorable.

[Elena De temmerman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Fuck this fucking shit bruh

[Madhulika Liddle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A young boy growing up in a village in French Guinea goes through the learning curve in various spheres of life. His father, at his forge (he’s a metal worker, usually a blacksmith but at times also called in to be a goldsmith), draws on both his immense skill as well as what seem to be supernatural forces, to do his work. At school, the boy learns his lessons, but also learns how brutal older boys can be, and how uncaring the school administration can be. In the long and complicated ritual run-up to the all-important circumcision that marks his stepping into manhood, he learns what it means to be a man.

Told from the perspective of the boy who grew up into the man writing this account, Camara Laye’s The Dark Child is a fascinating book, tracing the narrator’s life through from twelve years of age till he’s a young man. There’s something very personal, very real about Laye’s telling of his protagonist’s story: there’s nothing in the way of a convoluted plot here, more like an account of everyday life at the village where the boy lives. His relationships with his parents, his siblings, his friends, and the relatives he goes to visit every now and then. His school. Growing up. Simple, everyday life, but brought richly to life. Mixing in with that is a magical realism of sorts, highlighted in the guardian spirits and totems of the boy’s parents, and how they guard or help the people in question.

I loved the way Laye shows the nuances of culture in Guinea: people who are Muslim, but whose animist traditions are so strong, they see no conflict between the monotheism of Islam and the many totems and animal spirits they believe in. There are the brief glimpses of attitudes towards European colonists and towards Westerners in general. There is a sense that this is not a story of just one boy’s life, but that of countless others like him: it’s a story about changing with the times, but staying, deep down, rooted in the land.

And there’s the wisdom of it. The simple, earthy sense. (I especially loved this wise comment about the ‘rustic’ nature of the people from villages: And if intelligence seemed slower it was because reflection preceded speech and because speech itself was a most serious matter).

I, as a middle-aged Indian woman, could have very little in common with the boy Camara Laye writes about in this semi-autobiographical book. Yet, never did I feel at a distance from him: he, his family, his friends, his fears and his triumphs, came across so vividly that I identified completely with him, was rooting for him all the way.

[ElenaSquareEyes · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Dark Child is a very quick and easy read. As it’s a memoir it’s written in the first person and it’s written quite simply, in part presumably because the narrator in question is a young child for most of it – the book ends when he is about eighteen. Camara Laye grew up in the 1930s in a village and he was one of the first in his family to go to school. He grew up experiencing the culture and traditions of his family and people but also started to embrace the slowly encroaching modern world.

There’s one chapter that’s all about when he was circumcised when he was about twelve or thirteen and how that was the moment he, and the other boys, became men. It was interesting but surprising as I just presumed that if a child was going to be circumcised it happened when they were a baby, not when they were prepubescent. The rituals he and the other boys experienced were a huge part of life in their village and while they didn’t really know exactly what was going to happen to them, they knew other boys (or young men) who had gone through it, including their own fathers.

It was interesting to see these rituals from both an outsider and insiders’ perspective. As while most of The Dark Child felt like a present narrative from the eyes of a child, there were moments when Laye would reflect on events as an adult and explain things that he had found out since he experienced them as a child. Things that seemed like magic and real as a child were then explained and were not so scary once he found out how certain things happened. But, as he did go away from home for school as he got older, there were something’s about the traditions that he never learnt the truth about.

This, and other moments like that, shows how embracing modernity can be a double-edged sword. While family may encourage a child to take the opportunities that they didn’t have, it can mean they lose out on learning things that are traditional and part of their community’s history. The Dark Child was an interesting coming-of-age story and how it blends superstition with education shows there’s value in both for people.