What do you think?
Rate this book
Un indigène à Gorée
325 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2017
1 person is currently reading
3 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 6, 2018
This is the second novel I read from this Senegalese author, which I bought and whom I met during the 2018 Casablanca book fair.
This novel is about the unlikely and forbideen romance between an Indigenous Black Senegalese man from the country side and a mixed blood woman with French citizenship taking place in the Gorée island, infamous home of 2 centuries of slavery and of centuries of occupation by various Europeans countries during WWII. Throughout the novel and the romance story, the author doesn't miss an opportunity to tell the readers about Africa's history, Senegal's history and black men's history from their own point of views. The author described very well through the various well developed characters the diverse inter-relationships existed through history between white men, black men, mixed blood, indigenous, citizens, and women. The chosen time period of WWII was intentional because it was the first real moment that colonized Africans started to stop seeing the White colonizer as a "God" to be feared since the French were themselves occupied by Nazi Germany. The author wrote an excellent novel with a good balance between the romantic and the historical stories.
If you're African and/or interested in the period of colonialism from the point of view of the colonized, this book is definitely for you.
If you're from a Europan country with a colonial history, you will learn a great deal from this book or you'll reject it totally.
This novel is about the unlikely and forbideen romance between an Indigenous Black Senegalese man from the country side and a mixed blood woman with French citizenship taking place in the Gorée island, infamous home of 2 centuries of slavery and of centuries of occupation by various Europeans countries during WWII. Throughout the novel and the romance story, the author doesn't miss an opportunity to tell the readers about Africa's history, Senegal's history and black men's history from their own point of views. The author described very well through the various well developed characters the diverse inter-relationships existed through history between white men, black men, mixed blood, indigenous, citizens, and women. The chosen time period of WWII was intentional because it was the first real moment that colonized Africans started to stop seeing the White colonizer as a "God" to be feared since the French were themselves occupied by Nazi Germany. The author wrote an excellent novel with a good balance between the romantic and the historical stories.
If you're African and/or interested in the period of colonialism from the point of view of the colonized, this book is definitely for you.
If you're from a Europan country with a colonial history, you will learn a great deal from this book or you'll reject it totally.
Displaying 1 of 1 review