Climbié,

by Bernard Binlin Dadié, Karen C. Chapman (Translator)

English, French (translation)

Genres: Africa, African Literature, France

157 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Bernard Binlin Dadié was an Ivorian novelist, playwright, poet, and administrator. Dadié received several awards in recognition of his literary career, with one of the last being the Grand Prix des Mécènes of the GPLA in 2016.[

Reviews

[Dawn Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read Around the World: Cote d' Ivoire

[Oleksandr Fediienko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Клемб’є вчиться старанно, тому його приймають у дедалі старші навчальні заклади. Закінчивши навчання в Кот-д’Івуарі, він їде до училища в Сенегалі, де збирають найкращих студентів Французької Західної Африки. Після навчання він залишається на десять років працювати клерком, поки не вирішує повернутися на Батьківщину. А там його саджають за активізм.
Дивно все ж африканські автори поводяться з часом. Дадьє, наприклад, детально описує те, що відбувається на базарі, і присвячує цьому кілька сторінок. Але фактично нічого не пише, скажімо, про роботу клерком або боротьбу за права африканців. Коли Клемб’є заарештували за його статті, я подумав: а він що, писав статті? Коли він взагалі встиг стати на цей шлях, якщо (за сюжетом) він щойно приплив додому? Автор подумки перестрибнув кілька років і вирішив, що деякі подробиці нам не важливі. А все ж акценти треба вміти розставляти.

[Moushine Zahr · Rating 4 out of 5]

First novel I read fron Ivory coast author. The novel resembles the many books written about colonial era by various authors from different African countries.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

COUNTRY: COTE D'IVOIRE

This book gives glimpses into the life of Climbié, a young boy from the Ivory Coast as he attends colonial French school, and then follows him to Dakar, Senegal where he finishes school and becomes a clerk. Upon his return to the Ivory Coast, he begins to speak out against colonial oppression and is imprisoned. Throughout the novel, the author attempts to show the tension between Africans, Europeans, and the people who are caught between the two worlds.

I really did not like this book. It does not have a traditional plot, and the main character does not have any particular stated goals or desires, except the desire to go to school, which he attains in the first half of the book. The obstacle impeding his happiness is nothing in particular, but is the whole oppressive system of colonialism. There is no specific incident that occurs to demonstrate this oppression – in fact, it seemed to me that the main character achieved everything he set out to achieve, which weakened the novel’s message. In one passage, he mentions that he would have liked to have been a doctor or a teacher, but that would have required more school. He didn’t want to go to school any longer, so he became a clerk instead. This choice is presented as a personal one – it did not stem from lack of opportunity or lack of means, or seem limited by his race or social status – so I didn’t really have a lot of sympathy for the character when he talked about being “denied his childhood dreams.” It wasn’t clear what those dreams were, or why he was unable to achieve them.

To his credit, the author paints a picture of African society in which the colonial presence is always there, and which always makes things harder than they need to be, whether because of the levels of bureaucracy or the inequities in salary or the subjective enforcement of certain laws. The picture that the book presents, though, is not clear. It’s like an impressionist painting, where you can see the subject of the painting, but it is fuzzy around the edges and doesn’t have a lot of definition. Even Climbié himself is more of an impression of a person than a fleshed out character. I can’t name a single personality trait that makes him seem like an individual person.

I realized as I read along that I don’t like “impressionism” in novels, and certainly not in this one. Now that I say that, especially seeing as how one of the central themes of the novel is the poor influence of French culture on its African colonies. I wonder how Bernard Dadié would feel to hear his writing compared to an essentially French art form. In any case, I kept wanting Climbié to be a real person instead of a stand-in generic African fellow. I wanted to know WHY he came back to Ivory Coast. I wanted to know what he said and did that got him thrown in prison. I wanted to know how he felt about things, and what he wanted to accomplish in his life, and I wanted some kind of internal monologue about how frustrated he was – something to fill him out and make him seem actually human. Instead, the novel presents his life in a series of unexplained and even unrelated snapshots. One minute he’s going on strike in Senegal, and the next he’s on the ship going back to Ivory Coast – no motivation is given for the change. One minute he’s writing political pieces and the next he’s in prison. And then he’s out of prison. No details are given about the hows or whys, which I found frustrating and I lost interest very quickly.

On the other hand, there was one particularly vivid image that stuck with me as the author described the behavior of Africans under colonialism. He compared Africans to crabs in a crab pot with a heavy bronze lid.. Every once in a while, the lid comes off, and all of the crabs scrabble all over each other trying to get a breath of fresh air or a bit of sunlight before the lid comes down again. This passage is my favorite one in the whole book, because it communicates a whole multitude of ideas: the oppression of colonialism, the desperation of the native Africans, the degradation of relationships caused by the oppressive atmosphere, and the exploitation of people and resources. Such a powerful and sad image, and a fitting one for the overarching theme of the novel.