Le Devoir de Violence

by Yambo Ouologuem

Le Devoir de violence raconte le destin de l'empire imaginaire de Nakem et de la dynastie des Saïf qui y règnent en maîtres retors. À travers elle, c'est l'histoire méconnue de l'Afrique qui nous est livrée de l'intérieur. Violences, assassinats, ruses, compromission des notables dans la traite des esclaves : pour la première fois, un auteur africain ne s'interdit rien dans le portrait séculaire de son continent. Pas plus qu'il ne se réfrène dans ses registres, de l'ironie mordante à l'érotisme débridé. En face, l'Europe et son système colonial ¿ déconstruit autant que raillé ¿ ne sont pas épargnés. Le récit se prolonge par l'errance poignante de Raymond Spartacus Kassoumi, fils de serfs.


Paru en 1968, ce premier roman remporta d'emblée le premier prix Renaudot attribué à un Africain. Devenu un livre-culte, il fut contesté au Sud pour ses hardiesses politiques et au Nord pour ses audaces d'écriture. Aujourd'hui, dans cette réédition, il se lit comme une construction littéraire vertigineuse et une épopée qui figure parmi les plus grandes œuvres de la littérature mondiale.

Genres: Africa, Fiction, Mali, African Literature, Classics, Novels, France

270 pages, Unknown Binding

First published September 1, 1968

About the author

Yambo Ouologuem (August 22, 1940 – October 14, 2017) was a Malian writer. His first novel, Le devoir de violence (English: Bound to Violence, 1968), won the Prix Renaudot. He later published Lettre à la France nègre (1969), and Les mille et une bibles du sexe (1969) under the pseudonym Utto Rodolph; he also wrote some poetry published in some journals and anthologies. Le devoir de violence was initially well-received, but critics later charged that Ouologuem had plagiarized passages from Graham Greene and other established authors. Ouologuem turned away from the Western press as a result of the matter, and remained reclusive for the rest of his life.

Reviews

[Praveen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A rebel? a cynic? a scoundrel? the living myth of personified rage, at the mercy of his neurotic legend? a sorcerer gone wrong? No. Not exclusively. Still another epithet was found for him: a retired criminal."

I read Penguin Classic's new launch edition of this book this month. This prose is outlandish. It created freakish weather first and then pelted down on my nascent barn, like a devastating unseasonal hailstorm! Have you heard about the book and the controversy around it? I hadn't. When I requested the book, I had no knowledge of the author or the book. Three things attracted me: first, Penguin's logo; second, a theme on Africa; and third, the mention of John Updike in the blurb.

‘A startling energy of language’ John Updike, New Yorker,

How right is the assessment of Updike! After reading the book, I would say that, as of late, I have not witnessed such language in prose. Extremely powerful, too ocular for the mental eyes, brusque, and blunt, yet poetic and lyrical. Unapologetic. As straight as a die. Perhaps this was the reason the author paid a price for it through criticism. Or maybe not.

The book portrays the mass of Africa, victimized not by the coloniser from outside but by the 'traditional colonizers', and for this reason, it is stated that the author was labelled as a self-hating black man by the political leaders and intellectual elite there. This book was published in 1968 in French, and at that time, African authors were known to write in 'predictable polite and classic French'. The book says: The author challenged the status quo with his radical portrayal and language at that time.

I don't know if the author was successful or not, but when you read this book more than 50 years later, you still cannot ignore the might of language and its instantaneous ramifications. The forcefulness it generates in the reader's mind is obvious and imposing in nature. In my opinion, this book is a piece of art. An act of sorcery performed by the author on paper. I have no doubt about this. I was utterly impressed by the writing. But this praise belongs to the craft and genius with which this book is written, not to the content of the book. The content in many places is too brutal, inhumane, remorseless, and sharp to digest without getting bruised for a faint-hearted reader. I also don't know how authentic it is with respect to the history of various tribes and kingdom's in Africa. The book tries to capture a very wide period of history within its few pages, and he did it in an august manner. I learned that 'Malian writer rose to worldwide fame in 1968 with his Renaudot Prize, France’s second most prestigious literary honor; he was knocked to the ground and vilified by accusations of plagiarism and a subsequent lawsuit from the English writer Graham Greene.'

I can recommend this book to all those who want to see the craft of the author, but the content of the book is not for all. I thank Netgalley and Penguin Press for providing me with a copy.

[CivilWar · Rating 4 out of 5]

[1/2]

In an interview for Jeune afrique, in its March 12, 1986 issue, beloved Burkanibé putschist and Stalinist dictator Thomas Sankara said, when asked about African literature:

"I don't like African novels. [...] It's always the same story: the young African goes to Paris, suffers, and when he returns he's out of touch with tradition."

He isn't wrong here at all, this is such a common narrative for so much African literature, specially Francophone African literature, that it might as well be the continent's equivalent of "the hero returns to his home town, which no longer feels like home". It was an expression of the African middle classes of the era who, existing in a society that was racist towards their own existed, alienated them, but in existing in that society they return alienated to the native society itself, no longer fit in, having taken an interest in whatever academic matter caught their eye which is not studied at all in their homeland.

It's very amusing then, that this little book, despite me being about to say multiple times that it's one of the most unique books to come out of that first generation of African literature, follows such a narrative... kinda. It's complicated. It's a weird book. Let's get into it.

An anti-nationalist, anti-idealist, materialist anti-epic
Bound to Violence, published in 1968 (lol of course, it could have only been such a year), strikes the reader knowledgeable on African literature as burning with an ethos that goes against every single other book of that early generation of writers, sharing all of their themes (the pre-colonial history of Africa, colonialism, the schooled African youth going to Paris to study in the universities, returning a changed man to the home land, the treasonous machinations of the African leaders who rule in the name of the former colonizers post-independence, old and new religions, the list goes on and on) while at every occasion, without exception, going the opposite way of its contemporaries.

It is a stridently anti-nationalist novel: As the first generation of African literature had the unenviable task of dealing with the independence and colonial questions in the arts, in different ways, mostly by writers who had been taught at schools of those very colonizers, many of them obviously had themes of the emergent African nationalism, either focusing on a "negative white influence" in African life by eroding African traditions, by showing pre-colonial life in Africa as idyllic or by forging a pan-Africanist national mythology, of course as bourgeois as any national mythology.

Bound to Violence goes against all this in the most radical of ways: there's "only" four chapters, by which it's meant, there's parts 1, 2 and 4 which are all chapter-length, and then part 3 which is the meat of the novel with 10 chapters, and the first chapter describes, in the Mali tradition of oral poetry of the griots, the pre-colonial history of the fictional Nakem Empire, very obviously a stand in for the medieval Mali Empire (with some pre-republican Ethiopia mixed in for good measure, with the presence of Jews and the almighty despotism of the Saif) for those who know their African history.

It is a gruesome history - that is the whole point, it is gruesome, as gruesome as the history of any other country. Not to say that it imagines colonialism as an improvement: the second chapter describes the process of colonization, the resistance against the French colonial troops, as well as their atrocities, with some extremely florid descriptions:

Assegais, lances, poisoned arrows, javelins, machetes, daggers, sabers and muskets, weapons of every kind, all thrice blessed by Saif ben Isaac al-Heit, were issued to the warriors of Nakem, Nakem-Ziuko, Goro Foto Zinko, Yame, Geboue, and Katsena, to the Sao, the Galibi, the Gohu, the Gonda, the Dargol, and the Ngodo; at the same time, riding black mules, sorcerers, charmers of vipers and boas, magi, criminals specializing in ordalic murder, herborists expert in poisoning and in the treatment of wells and ponds, assassins versed in the use of venomous plants, lethal objects, and terrifying animals, thronged to the banner of country and religion: fetishes, warriors, snakes, bees, wasps, arrows, elephants, panthers — these were the tanks of the Nakem resistance.

[...]

They pillage, loot, destroy everything in their path — the captives, some eight thousand of them, are herded together and the colonel, writing in his little black book, starts to apportion them. But then he gives up and shouts: "Go on, divide 'em up."

And each white man chooses for himself more than ten black women. Return to base with captives in daily marches of twenty-five miles. The children, the sick and disabled are killed with rifle butts and bayonets, their corpses abandoned by the roadside. A woman is found squatting. Big with child. They push her, prod her with their knees. She gives birth standing up, marching. The umbilical cord is cut, the child kicked off the road, and the column marches on, heedless of the delirious whimpering mother, who, limping and staggering, finally falls a hundred yards farther on and is crushed by the crowd.

Bound to Violence is an anti-epic in the real sense of the word; The book as a whole covers around some five centuries of the history of Nakem, covering entire centuries in a single chapter while hyperfocusing on the intimate details of the personal life of its characters in the ten chapters of part 3. In this way, rather than focusing on the "deeds of the nation" or in the "glory of its leaders" (the Saifs, with the single exception of the epilogue, appear exclusively as omnipresent but vague malignant puppet-master figures), it focuses on average people at different points in history of Nakem, from the early 1900s to independence in the post-WW2 period: tribesmen and their wives and families, serfs, overseas students, academics who come to Africa to transport African art back to Europe and come up with quack theories about it, etc etc. Hence Nakem comes alive: not in its "great national deeds", but in the day-to-day life of its inhabitants, indeed it is continuously, unrelentingly shown how all the political developments of Nakem are only the developments of colonial policy and the sinister machinations of the Nakem ruling class, the "notables", who only serve as intermediaries between the colonialist French bourgeoisie in order to oppress the subjects of colonialism.

There is a "main character", of sorts, as alluded to in the start - one Raymond-Spartacus Kassoumi, son of Kassoumi and Tambira. Unlike any other character in the novel, Raymond-Spartacus' life is shown in detail from his studious childhood to his adult years. So why is he a main character "of sorts"?

Well, because Raymond-Spartacus is only introduced on chapter 8 of part three, which is to say, four chapters away from the end of the novel. The next three chapters, are largely about him and describing his troubling life, hence why he is our "main character", though only in a sense. The real main character of Bound to Violence is the Nakem Empire and its history.

By describing not just Raymond-Spartacus' immediate environment and life, but the entire history of the empire leading up to its birth, following a clear path of cause and effect, the book weaves in its main themes the supreme materialist thesis, anti-bourgeois, anti-idealist and anti-individualist, that the individual, everyone, is a historical subject, that is, their entire consciousness is not just a result of nature and nurture but also of the entire thread of dialectical (i.e. holistic, to use another word) cause-and-effect that has led to their birth, growth and death, starting from the beginning of time, and involving thus the whole history of the world.

Raymond-Spartacus and all the events that happen to him are thus shown by the novel as being the effects of uncountable manifold causes going back centuries: the environment one develops in being shaped by centuries of its own history that led to the systems of serfdom, the economic base of any particular area, etc that shapes the whole of social and thus individual life; to the fact that it's not just the environment one lives in (be it regional, municipal or national) but in truth of the entire world, for everything is connected through manifold ways, and this is specially clear and obvious in the colonial world, where so much of its history is marked by colonialism, i.e. the invasion of a foreign power, of the integration of its economy in the world market.

Raymond-Spartacus, just like in all those African novels that Thomas Sankara dislikes, does in fact go to Paris to study, and suffers: his sister turns to prostitution and he accidentally has sex with her to the horror of both; soon after a sadistic john puts a razor blade in her soap and she slits herself accidentally, fatally. He starts living on odd jobs, a precarious existence that way, and spending all his free time in the bar getting hammered. He was a brilliant student, however, and got degrees in many areas, allowing him a good degree of flexibility on what he can work at. While nearly at the end of his rope, a gay white man which Raymond immediately recognizes as clearly eyeing him in a sexual way, comes onto him suddenly, saying that he loves him even though he does not know him and that he doesn't know him either. He accepts his offer because of his economic situation.

(Amusingly, the relationship, which I expected to be of a "predatory white gay man comes onto down-on-his luck African man who only accepts due to his material condition", mixed with a sort of racial domination or humiliation angle as the book has some interesting takes on the matter of race an the black intellectualist movements of the era as one might expect from such a book, written in both a time and place that didn't see homosexuality favorably at all, is instead portrayed as perfectly healthy: Kassoumi is always a willing partner, sometimes even an active and passionate one, and his white lover is never predatory or abusive, the relationship is described in non-judgemental terms, and it doesn't even have a sort of pederastic overtones and aesthetic to it, as they're both grown men, neither being youthful or pretty-boyish or having a mentor or protector sort of relationship. This is undeniably the first portrayal of a gay relationship in African literature, for due to both reason of culture, ideology and intent, the topic never comes up in books of the generation, and if it does it's negatively and offhand, so it's shocking that it's also such a positive and healthy one. It is, however, not the first literary depiction of an interracial gay relationship between a white man and a black man: that would be the first Brazilian gay book, Bom-Crioulo from 1895, about a black escaped slave turned sailor having a romantic affair with a 15 year old sailor boy, resembling almost a marital life, until the later is seduced by an older, mature prostitute lady.)

Raymond-Spartacus Kassoumi marries a white Parisian woman, and has three children with her. He's an acclaimed man, respected and shown as being the good respectable result of colonial cooperation between colonizer nation and its brutally exploited territories. He finally lives a stable life. Then world war 2 comes along: infatuated with France, the society that nonetheless racially oppresses him and leaves him alienated, he throws himself into combat to defend it. A shell obliterates a house while he's inside and he's trapped, left, assumed dead. For years he lives in a state of semi-savagery, feeding on wild nuts and rats, the winter tears his health apart, he skins rabbits for some warmth. When he returns, he's informed that two of his children and his mother-in-law died in the war. Finally our main man goes back to his homeland, to be hailed as president to the newly independent Republic of Nakem-Zuiko due to cause-and-effect happenstance that makes the ruling class pick him as his puppet. He comes back, in fake glory, fully aware that he's being used in the games of the feudal despot, the Saif, and the Nakem bourgeoisie, veritable compradores.

Thus we see the life of Raymond-Spartacus Kassoumi in detail, in its entirety - but because of everything that preceded it, we know that he is mere historical subject, like everyone else, he is a product of history and all his actions, feelings, his entire consciousness, can be traced by links of cause-and-effect to history.

Race, Negritude, Satire
Bound to Violence is a satire and a critique, not of the general nationalist sentiment of African writers at the time, but of a very specific movement - Négritude.

Négritude was an pan-Africanist, black nationalist movement from the 30s onward by black Francophone intellectuals that was very influential with the generations of Francophone African intellectuals, which is to say, every French-speaking African writer was at the very least aware of it, likely influenced by it. It emphasized a pride in African traditions, beliefs and history, continent-wide, and was a reaction of the educated sons of the black bourgeoisie sent overseas to study at the racism they encountered in French society.

Without being cynical, we can consider Négritude the sort of ideology of the emerging black African bourgeoisie: entirely bourgeois concepts (nationalism, racialism, traditions, etc) of an emerging ruling class which finds itself resentful at being stuck as an intermediate between its subjects and the French bourgeoisie that truly rules it, disgusted with the racism aimed at them despite them being just as educated as the whites, etc.

These ideas were, of course, utopian: Most African countries have no national basis, their borders and "nationality" was just the products of imperialism, hence countless peoples stand united bellow a single national flag with which none really identify with. Few African countries managed to have a true sense of nationality after their revolutions, such as Tanzania as led by Julius Nyerere, with Swahili successfully being used as a sort of lingua franca between all the multilingual peoples. This was not the fault of such and such African leader, of course, but of the lack of a native bourgeoisie, the reactionary political effects of colonialism, the defeat of the communist movement in that period of around 1917-36 or so, etc.

So if this is true for any given country, needless to say, it goes even further for Africa as a whole continent. There is no "African race", the concept of "black" itself was a beast of European creation which found no resonance with much of the African masses, for whom every single different people was "black" and certainly not "one of them" because of them. The racial genocides in the country: the Tutsi/Hutu conflicts (not entirely ethnic per se, but related certainly) that exploded into genocide multiple times in Burundi and Rwanda, the genocidal madness against Igbos in Nigeria from the mid-60s to 1970, the Effacer le tableau in the DR Congo - the genocide against pygmy people, who are discriminated against on a racial basis that they are cannibalistically eaten for they are not considered human, and many others. All of these genocides had a heavily racial character, as for much of the population "black" exists only as a concept introduced by the Europeans, with no bearing on African society, and which is only relevant when one is juxtaposed with whites.

Négritude died with the African national revolutions in Francophone Africa, as its illusions could no longer be maintained with such disappointing results. Bourgeois illusions were dashed: African countries didn't unify on a national basis, the African bourgeoisie didn't have a national character but only of corrupt bureaucratic intermediaries making fortunes for themselves by allowing the strongest imperialism exploit the land and people under their domination, under while continuing to use the watchwords of "national [i.e. often times African] unity" - unity of exploited and exploiter.

Bound to Violence revels in this terrible truth, and shows it uncompromisingly, while using the style and language of Négritude: Stylistically, the book is very varied and eclectic, and this is not used randomly or on accident.

The first chapters, describing the history of the Nakem Empire, are written in the style of griot oral poetry, traditional to Mali, indeed how much of its history has been recorded and passed down generation to generation; thus African tradition. Chapters up further ahead use stylistic devices characteristic to the surrealists, who much influenced the Négritude writers, and much of the bizarre, grotesque imagery in the novel itself feels at home with such writers as, perhaps, Georges Bataille. Bound to Violence uses the stylistic devices of Négritude in order to tell a story that goes against all its postulates, a story that asserts the un-nationality of Africa, that shows African history not as "united" before the whites arrived, but as a struggle between the classes, that sees colonialism not as something that one day invaded and occupied Africa and can be shaken off by feelings of nationalism and racial pride but as a form of economic exploitation of vast swathes of land and people by imperialism that continues under formal independence, that indeed those ideas only serve to hide ongoing oppression, etc.

The story uses the words négre to refer to black people and négraille to refer to black people as a whole (more on this later). This wasn't something that Ouologuem did to be edgy, but rather these were the terms reclaimed by Négritude, thus used in placed of the much less racially charged noir.

The book this book is most often compared to Two Thousand Seasons by Ayi Kwei Armah. Full disclosure, I know of the book for it's a classic mentioned frequently when it comes to classic African literature, but I have not read it for a copy costs a small fortune for whatever reason and the only digital copy is a direct, two pages by each side digital scan available on archive.org with very dodgy OCR. Now, Bound to Violence was also only available as a scanned pdf there, never having been made available into an e-book, but I cracked the DRM of the file and then painstakingly went through every single page in Libreoffice, then ported it to Calibre to make an epub. [continues in the comments]

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very unusual book. It's kind of like Two Thousand Seasons in that both start off with a narrative history of Africa based on oral tradition, but this book is much more pessimistic and negative, he basically portrays African history as perpetual violence and exploitation forever, whereas Armah is more positive about 'original' African society before a ruling class existed. It's also kind of strange in that the ultimate villain is always the African monarch, who is portrayed as manipulating the European colonizers who don't really realise what he's doing - this starts to make sense though when you realise that Ouologuem wrote the book as an attack on Négritude and similar ideologies romanticising African traditional culture . It veers wildly between styles - there's stuff that reads like an oral epic, a more realist European influenced style, and even small sections of philosophical dialogue and surreal first person narrative. It's actively hostile to the reader a lot of the time - characters are sometimes introduced only to be gruesomely murdered by snake venom within pages and long stretches of time are spent on seemingly pointless things. Some quotes:

"Several witnesses declared that someone had deliberately filed the horse's girth to provoke a scandal. Their ears were pulled, their heads were shaved, and crosses were tattooed on the soles of their feet in order that each one of their steps might be an offense to God; the imperial sorcerer threatened to curse their fathers, mothers, ancestors and descendants; and certain courtiers, who had been denounced, were obliged to confess their falsehood to God, who spoke to them through the mouth of the sorcerer; they were banished to Digal, where horses trampled them and shattered their limbs; with a Tuareg dagger, blessed and turned seven times in their eyes, their ears, their testicles, and then slowly in their navels, they were drained of their seditious blood, and finally, by burning, recalled to the most-compassionate Master of the Worlds."

"A hundred million of the damned - so moan the troubadours of Nakem when the evening vomits forth its starry diamonds - were carried away. Bound in bundles of six, shorn of all human dignity, they were flung into the Christian incognito of ships' holds, where no light could reach them. And there was not a single trader of souls who dared, on pain of losing his own, to show his head at the hatches. A single hour in that pestilential hole, in the orgy of fever, starvation, vermin, beriberi, scurvy, suffocation, and misery, would have left no man unscathed. Thirty per cent died en route. And, since charity is a fine thing and hardly human, those amiable slavers were obliged when their cargo was unloaded to pay a fine for every dead slave; slaves who were as sick as a goat in labour were thrown to the sharks. Newborn babes incurred the same fate: they were thrown overboard as surplus.... Half naked and utterly bewildered, the niggertrash, young as the new moon, were crowded into open pens and auctioned off. There they lay beneath the eyes of the all-powerful(and just) God, a human tide, a black mass of putrid flesh, a spectacle of ebbing life and nameless suffering."


"My head.
My head.
My God, the pain. I'm tired. What is there in the South? My tongue is so heavy. It's an enormous block of ice. Painfully I savour my icy tongue and my limbs aroused by its coldness. My body is black. My body is a vault filled with an avalanche of cold shivers clinging to tatters of sound. Nature speaks; she's hot. I am king, I live the life of the privileged. The crickets cry out with the heat, I am frozen with intense pleasure. I'm in pain. I don't want to be the victim of my obsessions. I am a sick field. My head rolls after the lianas in the sperm-wet ground. My eyes go on clearing the forest. In the landscape a few trees refuse to stand : they lie down in ditches, drift, slide, stop for a moment at the wall of the horizon as a moth stops at a lamp."

[Bob Jacobs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fuck me.

Dit werk gaat niets uit de weg: (massa)moord, expliciet geweld, kannibalisme, verkrachting, slavernij, incest, … it’s all there. En dat alles in een bevreemdende vertelling die de geschiedenis weergeeft van een fictief Afrikaans rijk waarbij er vaak op specifieke mensen wordt gefocust: niemand wordt gespaard, iedereen is schuldig.
Geschreven in vele verschillende registers en in een krachtige stijl. Dit boek gaat nog even nazinderen. Miljaar.

[Stephen Durrant · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is not easy to rate Ouologuem's controversial 1968 novel "Bound to Violence." A work of genius and great power, it is also something of a mess. I defy anyone to extract a coherent narrative of the African Nakem Empire from this book, much of which is structured as a kind of historical novel. One can argue that presenting history is not the purpose of a novel, but one should expect at least a bit of clarity and coherence. Moreover this novel has been plagued by accusations of plagiarism, some of them apparently well-founded. But for an unflinching, absolutely unsentimental look at the violence that has been such a part of African history, one can hardly do better. Africa, indeed mankind, the novel argues, is "bound to violence": "Men kill each other because they have been unable to communicate" (p. 175). White colonialism becomes just one more mutation in this never-ending tale of violence. Ouologuem throws his bitter barbs in all directions. A German anthropologist creates a romanticized, beautiful, artistic Africa on the basis of counterfeit masks villagers create, hide and then help him excavate. The election of Senghor-like African political figure, educated in France, is said to "satisfy the people's hunger for miraculous destinies and at the same time flatter the white man, who would squeal with glee that he had civilized his underdeveloped charge" (p. 165). This novel may be the best antidote to a sentimental vision of Africa. But it is far from an easy read--way too far!

[Christopher]

A strange, brutal book that seems simple, but deepens as it unfurls. Simple, elegant prose in places. Satire soaked in blood. This indicts everyone. A must read for decolonizing the mind.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't get on with this scathing satire about a fictional African state whose people are repeatedly exploited by their rulers.

The 1st section is a whistle-stop tour of several centuries of the history of this state from the 13th century up until the European powers came on the scene in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The population are enslaved initially by their own rules either to work as farm labourers or sold to the Arabs for shipment East.

Then the European colonialists come on the scene and it's more of the same.

I found it hard to focus on the plot as for most of the novel it's shifting from person to person without a central focus. Later on we do get to focus on a particular person but by then it's quite late on.

One annoyance is the way multiple quite important characters are killed off stage very peremptorily and dismissed in a single sentence.

Oh, and there's one extremely had to believe coincidence

[nadia]

WOAH. desperately needs a reread to untangle all the details but what a book.....bloody and awful and sarcastic

"The crux of the matter is that violence, vibrant in its unconditional submission to the will to power, becomes a prophetic illumination, a manner of questioning and answering, a dialogue, a tension, an oscillation, which from murder to murder makes the possibilities respond to each other, complete or contradict each other. The outcome is uncertainty. But also a conflict between the rejection of decadence and nostalgia for a privileged experience, the forced quest of a morality provided with a false window offering a vista of happiness: the golden age when all the swine will die is just around the corner."

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chess as metaphor,
Tyrants as a process of becoming and re-becoming,
Subversion and parody is not plagiarism,
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr summed it up best as the 'essential novel'.

[David Heyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great great book. Difficult at times but in this novel Ouloguem shows sparks of the genius he could have become. Too bad that he lives life in seclusion now. The sometimes 'messy' part is done on purpose I think: he wants to mix the African epic style with the European novel-style and leaves you -the reader- behind in the dark... One of the great African classics.

[Anouk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boekenclub boek! Begreep er echt vrij weinig van, hopelijk de rest wel

[Thabs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Equal parts perplexing, equal parts fascinating.

[Tessa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tellement de violence, tellement de sexe violent, de guerre, de misère, de trahison. Trop!

L'exercice auquel s'est prêté Ouologuem, qui consiste à pasticher des auteurs reconnus pour mener à bien son projet d'écriture, est sans doute l'aspect le plus intéressant de cette oeuvre littéraire. À cela s'ajoute évidemment l'intelligence et l'érudition de l'auteur. Je comprends l'engouement des lecteurs africains et de la diaspora africaine à Paris pour cette première reconnaissance aux concours littéraires d'autant plus qu'ils et elles comprennent bien mieux que moi les subtilités de cet ouvrage. Mais de la même manière que je ne suis pas une adepte des romans d'horreur à la Stephen King, je ne le suis pas non plus pour ce genre de littérature.

[Justin Echols · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The popular imagination transformed defeat into genius and the dictatorship of a tyrannical dynasty into eternal glory; the defeated emperor was numbered among the cohorts of 'those just men whose greatness quenches the thirst of the agonizing heart.'
Twilight of the gods? Yes and no. More than one dream seemed to be fading; a turning point of civilization, or should one say a convulsion presaging its ultimate end? Presaging a new birth? Or merely a sempiternal agony, presaging nothing? A tear for the blacks, O lord, in thy compassion."

[WillemC · Rating 3 out of 5]

Een Malinese postkoloniale roman die goed begint maar de belofte toch niet echt kan waarmaken. De eerste delen, waarin het mythische verleden van het fictieve koninkrijk Nakem wordt beschreven, zijn boeiend en bij momenten gewelddadig en choquerend, maar eens de twintigste eeuw bezig is en we Afrika verlaten om wat studenten in Parijs te gaan volgen, zakte mijn interesse drastisch en ze kwam eigenlijk niet meer terug. Misschien ligt het aan de vertaling, want ik las niet de nieuwste maar een waarschijnlijk verouderde versie uit 1970 onder de titel "Het recht van geweld".

[Eduardo Cárdenas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Upon publication, this book attracted a lot of attention for 3 main reasons: 1) first time an African author won the prestigious Renaudot prize in France, 2) accusations of plagiarism, 3) widespread condemnation from key African freedom-fighters who thought the book was too anti-African/black. The plot follows the history of a fictitious African kingdom from birth through colonial era and post-colonial times. The book offers a scathing view not only of the European colonial powers but also of the black elites who would stop at nothing to retain their power over the ignorant masses. I think this novel is as ambitious as it is perfectly executed. The story is so original and well written that any plagiarism feels more like a collage in the hands of a great artist, rather than a sloppy theft. And I think that the harsh critiques the author made towards the black elites was born from his own anger and disappointment at the events that followed African independence. Sometimes we direct our harshest judgements for the people we love the most.

Extra points for including a queer character that felt real and nuanced.

[Truls Ljungström · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jag läste denna på engelska - inte franska. Språket är imponerande och är i sig ett skäl att läsa boken - förmodligen ännu bättre i original men för svårt för mig där.

Ramberättelsen är en slags krönika över det fiktiva riket nakem som efter en serie perversa och inkompetenta monarker koloniseras av Frankrike, och hur individer ur befolkningen reagerar på omständigheterna och bygger nya vanor och sedvänjor. Genomgående finns en enorm cynism - bakom varje vackert ord lurar en slavhandlares girighet och det sadistiska nöjet i att skada någon som inte kan protestera.

Helt klart läsvärd.

[Emīls Ozoliņš · Rating 4 out of 5]

First off, thank you to Penguin Press and NetGalley for the ARC. I’m beyond grateful to get access to some of the new Modern Classics, as it’s one of my favorite series to collect.

That being said, I have absolutely no idea how, what to rate this and why.
It’s one of the most brutal, confusing, heartbreaking, devastating books I’ve ever read, it’s troubling me quite a bit.
I genuinely don’t know what to say - let yourselves be warned before you read this, but do - for how much African literature have you read?

[Najib · Rating 1 out of 5]

Un écrit sans queue ni tête avec des phrases qui défient la grammaire Française et des mots empruntés à différentes langues, patois d’une rare violence.

[Tafelvoetbaltalentjelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Niet het méést gezellige boek.

[Pia · Rating 2 out of 5]

there were parts that i thought were good and others i really didn't like. overall it was ok

[Samuel Driessen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tja, een bijzonder boek is het. Bij vlagen briljant geschreven, vaak rauw en ruw. Boeiend hoe de Afrikaanse cultuur en geschiedenis verteld wordt, waarbij de (negatieve) invloeden van het Jodendom, het Christendom en de Islam en natuurlijk het kolonialisme beschreven worden.

[africawrites - The RAS' annual festival of African Literature]

This is not a book I've read but the story of the author, Yambo Ouloguem and the controversy surrounding this book make it one of the top African titles on my 'wishlist'.

If you like this book or others like it, you may want to join us for Africa Writes. It takes place this year at the British Library from 5-7 July 2013.

For more info on the festival, visit our website: www.royalafricansociety.org/event/afr...

You may also like our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/AfricaWrites

Follow us on twitter - www.twitter.com/royafrisoc

Dele Meiji Fatunla
Website Editor
Royal African Society

[Akon · Rating 5 out of 5]

*this* is the greatest african novel

[Remy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had such high expectations of this book! I found it a very hard read, at times even boring and incoherent.

[Yasmina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Je n'ai malheureusement pas vu le génie... mais cela est surement dû à l'epoque.

[Caterina Pierre]

Bound to Violence (1968) by Yambo Ouologuem (1940-2017) is an important novel which was "lost" for a long time due to the fact that the author was accused of plagiarism in the 1960s when it was first published, and afterward the book was not in print. It wasn't clear to me which parts were "plagiarized," and I think, in the case of a novel, there is a difference between plagiarism and paying homage to previous authors whose words connect with the new story being told. There is also a racist element in this history, as Ouologuem was accused of plagiarism by a white author (Graham Greene) whose copyright was in no way harmed by any suggestion of his texts. If I wrote the words "The era was great, the era was horrible," at the start of a novel, no one would run me out of the writing business, and everyone would be in on the nod that I was making to Dickens. In any case, old prejudices die hard, and the book only became available in 2023 in a new translation, and I read it for the Albertine Book Club of New York.

The novel contains four parts: "The Legend of the Saifs," a "history" of the fictitious African Empire of Nakem; "Ecstasy and Agony," which is short, and establishes the power and violence of the ruling Saif; "The Night of the Giants," which is the meaty part of the novel and contains the meeting, marriage, and children born to Kassoumi and Tambira, as well as the intrigues of the Saif, the colonial overseers in Nakem, the trials of Sankolo, fiancé of Awe, and the story of Kassoumi and Tambira's son, Raymond; and finally "Dawn," which is a short conversation about power and control between Henry, the resident Christian missionary, and the ruling Saif.

The novel is somewhat difficult reading. It's beautifully written in parts, and is well translated into English, so the troubles do not stem from the language. But the violence ranges from female genital mutilation, murder of the most foul types, rape, incest, and slavery, complete with the collaboration of the Saif himself, who exploits his own people. This is not to suggest that the violence herein is exclusive to Africa; the brutality expounded on here is not different than any brutality one might find in any occupied land. But there is a lot of it, and the violence seems to have, in most cases, no point. The novel also has no real plot. Things happen but nothing really happens, and we follow the main characters from the late nineteenth century through the 1940s without any really resolution to any of their stories. I soured on the fact that the most egregious violence is directed towards the women, primarily Tambira, Awa, and Kadida, and while the character development is somewhat limited, one will feel personally insulted by the crimes committed against the female characters.

I didn't think any parts of the novel were necessarily funny, as it is not that kind of novel. The reader will sense of feeling of sarcasm, especially when the people of Nakem are being shown as naive or underdeveloped. The one "funny" part revolves around Shrobenius, the German ethnologist who arrives in Nakem to study (and obtain) artifacts from the Saif. He thinks he's getting the best African masks and sculptures ever made, when really Saif is having fakes made for him while keeping the good stuff in Nakem. This is all great, and a great trick played on the white thieves from Europe, until it leads to a murder for no apparent reason, so it's funny for a paragraph or so, and then it's not funny anymore.

The book is less of a strict narrative story and more a collection of vignettes containing characters that reoccur throughout part three. We lose track of Kassoumi and Tambira until their children are almost done with school. We follow Sankolo through the desert for what seems like weeks, only to have his story tied up in a minute. As a first novel, it develops a lot of great characters and story lines, but many, such as that of Raymond, seemed to end without resolution, or or else they are interesting characters who are done away with in a sentence.

So: I think this is an important book with a lot of serious issues, most importantly the scourge of colonialism and the fight for self-realization in a place where such a right is squashed by all forces, externally and internally. But it's not a book read for pleasure, in my opinion. Read it, for sure, but don't take it to the beach.

[Abiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow.

I’m afraid that nothing I could say about this book would ever good enough.

The most rich, intense, and triumphant piece of prose I’ve ever had the honour of reading. I’m only angry that I hadn’t heard of this book sooner. Ouologuem is a genius, I wonder if the plagiarism scandal hadn’t occurred, what more could his brilliant and fascinating mind have come up with. We shall never know and that’s a damn shame.

This is more than a biting satire of empire and colonialism, this book gnaws and gnaws and gnaws at you. I’ve never felt more uncomfortable or squeamish than I have reading this (and I mean that in the most sincerely positive way possible).

Ouologuem takes aim at romanticised ideas of pre-colonial Africa but he throws his most loaded sucker punches at colonialism and its devastating ramifications on society and humanity.
A simplistic reading from some critics suggests that Ouologuem harbours self-hatred. I don’t believe this to be the case. In fact, to say that Ouologuem reserves his most visceral and savage attacks for his own people is just categorically untrue. Ouologuem was born and raised in French-colonial ruled Mali. He was only 20 when Mali gained independence from the French. That age is so intellectually and developmentally crucial it’s bizarre to think that his lived pain would not have affected him so greatly. The ritualistic and occultist descriptions of the fictional Nakem Kingdom are so clearly him satirising colonial justifications of “civilising the savages”. He makes it clear that whatever suffering and pain African nations may have put their own people through, it is still nothing compared to the calculated and systemic oppression at the hands of the White Man.

To me, Bound to Violence is one gigantic, mocking finger pointed firmly at all those who aspire to nostalgic ideals of imagined pasts; at the wicked and cruel colonialists; and, at all those who betray themselves to become a part of the same ruling, imperial class that harms them.

There are those that say the language is “too brutal” or “too primal” and “too vulgar” not realising that their discomfort is the goal. To have written this in more polite and palatable language would’ve been another form of imperialism. Imperialism is violent. It rapes and pillages and destroys everything in its path. Imperialism is not polite or considerate. To write this novel in any other way would’ve been an insult to history. A violent history necessitates a violent retelling. It should not have to be palatable to white readers.

I’m reminded of Fanon and his thoughts on violence: “𝙑𝙞𝙤𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙞𝙨 𝙖 𝙘𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙘𝙚. 𝙄𝙩 𝙛𝙧𝙚𝙚𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙞𝙣𝙛𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙮 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙭 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙙𝙚𝙨𝙥𝙖𝙞𝙧 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣; 𝙞𝙩 𝙢𝙖𝙠𝙚𝙨 𝙝𝙞𝙢 𝙛𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙡𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙧𝙚𝙨 𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙛-𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙘𝙩”

———

I leave you this extract from Bound to Violence:

“𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙧𝙪𝙭 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙩𝙚𝙧 𝙞𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙫𝙞𝙤𝙡𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚, 𝙫𝙞𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙞𝙩𝙨 𝙪𝙣𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙙𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙨𝙪𝙗𝙢𝙞𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙤 𝙥𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧, 𝙗𝙚𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙨 𝙖 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙥𝙝𝙚𝙩𝙞𝙘 𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙪𝙢𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣, 𝙖 𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙧 𝙤𝙛 𝙦𝙪𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙖𝙣𝙨𝙬𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜, 𝙖 𝙙𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙤𝙜𝙪𝙚, 𝙖 𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣, 𝙖𝙣 𝙤𝙨𝙘𝙞𝙡𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣, 𝙬𝙝𝙞𝙘𝙝 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙢𝙪𝙧𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙤 𝙢𝙪𝙧𝙙𝙚𝙧 𝙢𝙖𝙠𝙚𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙤𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙗𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙚𝙨 𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙥𝙤𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙚𝙖𝙘𝙝 𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧, 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙩𝙚 𝙤𝙧 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙩𝙧𝙖𝙙𝙞𝙘𝙩 𝙚𝙖𝙘𝙝 𝙤𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧. 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚 𝙞𝙨 𝙪𝙣𝙘𝙚𝙧𝙩𝙖𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙮.

[Gerrit De Vries · Rating 4 out of 5]

In de roman ‘De Diepst Verborgen Herinnering van de Mens’ van Mohammed Mbougar Sarr, zoekt de hoofdpersoon aan de hand van enkele passages van een grote Afrikaanse man naar de schrijver die dat boek schreef. De schrijver in Sarr’s roman is gebaseerd op werk en leven van Yambo Ouologuem. Het prachtige verhaal van Sarr voedde mijn nieuwsgierigheid naar het boek van Ouologuem.
Ouologuem beschrijft de Saif dynastie in het fictieve Afrikaanse rijk Nakem, ergens in West Afrika. Zijn epos spant zich van de 13e tot en met de 20e eeuw. Het beschrijft hoe geweld, slavernij, erotiek en listigheid gedurende al die eeuwen werden gebruikt om aan de macht te blijven. Ten tijd van de Franse kolonisatie ging dat gewoon door en ik vond het fascinerend om te lezen hoe de machthebbers met de Fransen interacteerden waarbij belangen van beide partijen slim werden bevorderd. Als blik op een fictief Afrikaans land over de eeuwen is het een heel boeiend boek, alhoewel de stijl me soms teveel werd, zoveel geweld en gruwelijkheid.
Het boek heeft velen niet onberoerd gelaten. Het won de grote Franse literaire Prix Renaudot, maar werd ook slachtoffer van veel kritiek. Franse schrijvers beschuldigden Ouologuem van plagiaat, waarbij velen daar een vorm van koloniaal racisme in zien (zouden we bij een witte Franse schrijver hetzelfde gezegd hebben?). Andere Afrikaanse intellectuelen zoals Leopold Senghor vonden zijn boeken te kritisch over de Afrikaanse cultuur.
Hoe dan ook, zijn boek heeft veel gespreksstof opgeleverd. Met Ouologuem heeft dat veel gedaan: na nog een paar werken is hij in 1978 naar Mail teruggegaan en heeft daarna een teruggetrokken leven geleefd tot zijn dood in 2017.
Ik vond het een zwaar boek om te lezen, met teveel geweld. Leesplezier dus 3 sterren. Maar vanwege de waarde op literair gebied en de gezichtspunten van Ouologuem die afwijken van veel andere schrijvers uit zijn tijd is het toch heel boeiend. En de link met Sarr (zie volgende alinea) maakt het voor mij een bijzonder boek. Een vierde ster erbij daarom ...
Heb je dit boek gelezen, dan moet je ook zeker ‘De Diepst Verborgen Herinnering van de Mens’ van Sarr gaan lezen over de fascinerende zoektocht naar de schrijver T.C. Elimane die is gebaseerd op Ouologuem.

[Ben Rowe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bound to Violence is a unique book and it is highly memorable. For an "important" book it is pretty accessible. For years this book was sidelined as a result of plagiarism claims. However the author does not seem to be trying to pass off other peoples work as his own but rather incorporating them into his universe or mythology of his story. There is the old adapt about good writers borrowing and great writers stealling....

How he uses these elements is not too different from say how Michael Chabon or Jonathan Lethem more specifically take from other writers such as Raymond Chandler in some of their work - Motherless Brooklyn for instance.

It is hard to know to what extent these other books were taken and why but they certainly dont get in the way of enjoying or experiencing the book.

The book is filled with humor and extreme violence, its a sweeping account of one family over hundreds of years although most of the book is focussed on the early 1900's.

I did find it was a bit of a slog to get through as it isnt really my type of book ( I kind of want things more character based, and failing that plot based) but was interesting to read. I am not exactly sure how I would catagorise this but satire is certainly close to the centre of it.