The Shadow of Things to Come

by Kossi Efoui, Chris Turner (Translator)

In an unnamed African nation, the people are subject to a state of perpetual warfare and to an Orwellian abuse of language that strips from language its meaning and renders life senseless. And in a bare room lit only by moonlight, a young man hides, waiting for the mysterious crocodile-men to come and help him escape from the violent tyranny of the state. While he waits, he tells his story.

This is Kossi Efoui’s catastrophic and carnivalesque dreamscape, the dark setting of The Shadow of Things to Come. Here, men and women are taken in the night, spirited away from their families and sent to plantation penal colonies to be worked to the edge of madness. When they return, they are empty shells, their lost time referred to as the “Time of Annexation.” But though his parents were taken, our protagonist survived, first in the care of a quirky benefactress named Mama Maize, then under the wing of the state itself, as a student at one of its elite schools. When he meets a bookseller named Axis Kemal, however, he has found a surrogate father, an eccentric and wise man who can bring him out of the meaningless confusion and tell him the truth about the society he lives in.

Through his characters, Efoui speaks out against atrocity and the abuse of power, but more, he writes against political rhetoric and the destruction of meaning by government. This novel is a love letter to language and, in Chris Turner’s dazzling translation, it becomes a stunning introduction for English-language readers to an exciting new talent.

Genres: Africa, Fiction, Western Africa, The World, Novels, African Literature, Dystopia

146 pages, Hardcover

First published June 15, 2013

Reviews

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in an unnamed African nation which has fallen under some kind of dictatorial rule in which people are disappeared and forced to work to death or madness on the Plantation. Once the "commodity" (oil) is discovered, everything shifts and an aggressive campaign begins to bring tribal forest dwelling peoples into the "modern" world—for their own good and to secure pipeline passage. We learn this through the account of the speaker who is waiting in a room for his chance to escape. As he recounts his story, pieces of the situation come together, as well as anyone can figure, for this is a society in which language has been turned into meaningless slogans. Through a spare and cautious narrative style, the image of an Orwellian nightmare slowly takes shape.

A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2022/09/27/no...

[Lolilu]

L'ombre des choses a venir
COMPRAR

[Daniel Polansky]

A youth labors to survive in an imaginary African country turned Orwellian nightmare. Efoui reduces his surrealist landscape to component parts, denuded of cultural specificity and effective as a parable for the creeping totalitarianism of the modern state.

[Peter Rock · Rating 5 out of 5]

And if those inhabitants are called the crocodile men, that's an expression of the terror felt by those who live elsewhere at human beings who share their living space with the crocodiles in the swamps— according to the only team of explorers they have ever allowed in, for no one could go onto the island unless he was taken there by these men.
And apart from a few famous photographs taken from helicopters, in which you see children disporting themselves in a pool of crocodiles, within reach of their fangs, nothing is known of them or their origins, except that they have for centuries been bound by a pact to the crocodiles with whom they genuinely share their lives.
And they've done so without building houses on stilts or developing the art of hunting. No, says the speaker, these human beings, since we must call them that, have married their human smell with the smell of the crocodiles.
Otherwise, how can we explain how their children play with the young crocodiles the way others play on the backs of dolphins in theme parks? How can a young human lie down beside a baby crocodile within sight of the mother crocodile if he doesn't smell right?

[linah · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was okay but something felt a little off, I think because this is the translated version. I felt that I wasn’t into the story as much as I should be, couldn’t help but feel that something was lost in the translation. I would have loved to read the original version, but my knowledge of the French language is extremely limited.

There were times -especially in the early chapters- where I really tried to figure out who was narrating the story. The phrase “says the speaker” kept appearing at random places. I thought that phrase is from the translator, but I felt that it was interfering with the narration of the story by our protagonist whose name we never even got to know.

I have a book recommendation for all you that enjoyed reading this book. Ben Okri’s “The Freedom Artist” is a really good one, you’ll enjoy it too.

[غبار · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I couldn't shake off the sense of watching someone denuded through a hole in some nameless door, and suddenly noticing that it wasn't a stranger I was seeing but a man who looked like me—my father without glory or sparkle, so poorly finished-off, the outline on the ground of a man momentarily left for dead.
How can you be surprised, then, says the speaker, if my face in the photo has the hollowed-out form of a mask turned inside-out?"

—Thirdly, p31

[Ania (double.bookspresso) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Przepełniona goryczą wobec tych, którzy kontrolowanie wywołują wojny, a następnie narzucają warunki pokoju i Odbudowy. Rzeczywistość po wojnie nie istnieje, istnieją tylko widma. Metafizyczna, sen miesza się z jawą, poetycka, momentami trudno o skupienie. UWAGA NADJEŻDŻA CIERPIENIE UWAGA NADJEŻDŻA CIERPIENIE UWAGA NADJEŻDŻA...

[Africa BookChallenge]

The latest entry for The Africa Book Challenge The Shadow of Things to Come by Kossi Efoui for Togo is available!

Click on the URL on the profile page to learn more about this fascinating dissection of the language of propaganda.