Heremakhonon

by Maryse Condé

Veronica Mercier, a sophisticated Caribbean woman teaching and living in Paris, goes to a West African country to complete her search for self-identity. There, she finds herself involved with a "nigger with ancestors" - a cold, calculating minister for the interior and heir to the presidency.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, France, Africa, African Literature, School

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Maryse Condé was a Guadeloupean, French language author of historical fiction, best known for her novel Segu. Maryse Condé was born as Maryse Boucolon at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, the youngest of eight children. In 1953, her parents sent her to study at Lycée Fénelon and Sorbonne in Paris, where she majored in English. In 1959, she married Mamadou Condé, an Guinean actor. After graduating, she taught in Guinea, Ghana, and Senegal. In 1981, she divorced, but the following year married Richard Philcox, English language translator of most of her novels.

Condé's novels explore racial, gender, and cultural issues in a variety of historical eras and locales, including the Salem witch trials in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem and the 19th century Bambara Empire of Mali in Segu.

In addition to her writings, Condé had a distinguished academic career. In 2004 she retired from Columbia University as Professor Emeritus of French. She had previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, the Sorbonne, The University of Virginia, and the University of Nanterre.

In March 2007, Condé was the keynote speaker at Franklin College Switzerland's Caribbean Unbound III conference, in Lugano, Switzerland.

Reviews

[Raul · Rating 4 out of 5]

"That's what courage must be. Letting the daily ritual of life go on unchanged."

It was saddening for me to learn of Maryse Condé’s death early last month. One tries not to form attachments to writers whose works one loves, but it's difficult not to feel grief when someone whose words meant a lot to you dies. I felt the same way a few weeks ago learning of Alice Munro’s death, and four years ago when Toni Morrison died. It's a different kind of grief; one I feel I have no right to bear as I didn't really know these writers outside of their books, and they were, and are, more than their work. Yet, a loss, all the same, that demands acknowledgement, even if it's on the personal level. And so as a way to work through this strange grief, I decided to read Maryse Condé again, deciding to read her debut.

This book has the caustic tone that underlies all of her books, all the six books I’ve read so far at least, but even sharper and harsher. Veronica is a young woman from the French Antilles, caught in an existential and identity crisis, who goes to a newly independent West African country to teach philosophy. When she arrives in the West African country she becomes friends with Saliou, the head of the institute she is to teach, and Birame III, a student in the same institute, who are opponents of the regime in power headed by Mwalimwana, the president who took charge of the country after independence and who is accused, rightfully too I think, of betraying the revolution by his opponents. Veronica becomes further entangled into the country’s politics when she begins having an affair with Ibrahima Sory, who is in charge of the security apparatus of the state and all it entails including opposition suppression. With all this, the stage for a fascinating drama is set, and Maryse Conde, as usual, delivers.

Veronica comes from a bourgeois Black family that prides itself in its distinction separating themselves from ordinary Black folk, that she rebels against. Her society is structured in hierarchies based on colour, and with her ancestors having been the enslaved and dispossessed, despite the heights her family have risen to, she feels the need to reconcile this with taking a lover “with ancestors” and using passion and romance—mostly passion, to help rid herself of the unease and trouble she feels, even if it means closing her eyes to the injustices around her caused by the man she’s with.

“I've been able to carry on as if nothing has happened because I have pretended to believe Ibrahima Sory. I have persuaded myself to believe him. I've bought my peace for the price of a lie.”

This was a very interesting book to read because it provides insight to the political happenings in a lot of African countries during independence. Those who had worked, alongside others, of course, while mostly championing radical political ideals, to end colonialism finally gained power and cling to it, betraying the hopes of their people and using terror to suppress opposition. Maryse Condé was in her forties when she wrote this. She had been a radical leftist in her youth and had known many radicals from Amilcar Cabral to Malcolm X and others, and had lived to see these people either become assassinated or become power hungry murderers, which, no doubt, disenchanted her. And the disenchantment spills in this book, clearly showing that all humans, especially those who come to power or are close to it, are corruptible.

In order to escape feelings that are uncomfortable humans often give themselves up to others, and Veronica does this too. In the end she learns that such escapism brings stagnancy, complacency, and moral degradation. Heremakhanon is a Malinke word that translates to en attendant le bonheur in French and waiting for happiness in English. A sad word that acknowledges suffering borne, and the sorrowful hopefulness that circumstances could change one day, and one that wraps this book up in a tight pretty bow.

[Helynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite book by Maryse Condé is Crossing the Mangrove (1989) because it gives such a rich and colorful view of the mid-20th-century culture of the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, where Condé grew up. But before she could return to her native culture and write about it so beautifully, she had to go through a personal crisis over her own identity. Hence, the novel Heremakonon, written in 1976, is an entirely different kind of a semi-fitionalized work, although it is still highly personal and autobiographical. In 1953, the young author author left her Antilles island home, fleeing what she saw as the oppression of French colonial rule, racial tension, and the resulting boredom and confused identity for native intellectuals. She gained her education in France, and spent the next 34 years teaching and writing in France, Africa, and in the United States. In her first-person narration of Heremakonon, Conde describes herself, a young, respected professor in France, who feels out of place in a mostly European-Caucasian society, and believes she must move to Africa to get in touch with her genealogical roots to achieve better self-understanding and personal identity. Heremakonon is the story of her subsequent passionate, if ultimately unsuccesful, search for racial pride and a sense of her cultural selfhood in Africa. As the novel progresses, however, the focus is less on the author's disillusionment with Guadeloupe and more and more on her inability to find any rapport with the contemporary African milieu and its maelstrom of political unrest into which she is immediately thrown. Her personal quest, then, quickly dissolves before the exterior circumstances around her as she tries to walk the tighrope between friendship and support of her students and colleagues--proponents for a local revolutionary effort--and the residents of Heremakhonon, the walled-in headquarters of the current government. Her loyalities are split impossibly two ways: First, with her academic colleague, Saliou, and her radical student Birame III, and second, with Ibrahim Sory, henchman to the country's dictator, with whom she has a love affair at Heremakhonon. I will not reveal any more of the intrigue of this novel, except to say that it ends in disillusionment for the young professor. Between the writing of Heremakonon and Crossing the Mangrove, Condé reached an epiphany in her life and in her career, i.e., that is it useless to seek self-understanding and self-actualization in Africa, where the present attitudes, volatile political situations, and cultural imperatives have little or no meaning for the displaced and frustrated people of the Antilles. The search for self demands, instead, a return to one's Caribbean roots, which prove an equally valid and more solid and viable cultural and anthropological base than any that could be traced to the continent where one's ancestors orginated--usually no more recently than 200 or 300 years before. As much as I enjoyed Heremakonon, and as much as it can stand alone as an interesting study of modern-day Africa and its challenges, I am grateful that it represented a turning point for Condé, at which moment she decided to bless us with her many subsequent novels that champion the value of her Guadeloupeen roots.

[Maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Satire yes but almost tragic in its acerbity. Labor all you want to scrub the stain of imperialism away, but its long shadow, in whatever form is left (in the pre-colonial past and post-colonial present), remains.

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

En attendant le bonheur is a revised edition of Condé's first (1976) novel, Heremakhonon (a Malinke word meaning "waiting for happiness", which she translated into French for the later novel -- by the way, this novel has no connection with the film of the same name.) The original novel was extremely controversial and was not commercially successful; she has a preface here explaining that it was misunderstood and outlining the changes she made to make it clearer what she intended. In my review of Ségou: les murailles de terre I suggested that the political dimension of the book should be considered in the context of the debates over négritude and Pan-Africanism, and her last book I read, La vie scélerate also deals with many of the same ideas (Garveyism, and the class divisions in Guadeloupean society). In this preface, she makes it explicit that many of her works are a critique of négritude and Pan-Africanism, emphasizing the diversity of African and diaspora cultures and the importance of class divisions within Caribbean and African nations.

The novel is the story of a bourgeois Guadelupean woman, Véronica Mercier, who, after nine years in Paris, comes to an unnamed West African country (modeled on the Guinea of Sekou Touré, in the early 1960's) seeking a Black past which was not based on slavery. She takes a job teaching philosophy in a local school. The book is told in stream-of-conciousness, beginning with her arrival in the country and then flashing back to fragmentary memories of Guadaloupe and Paris; the chronology of the memories is not in order, so it is rather confusing at first, especially as her two lovers are named Jean-Marie and Jean-Michel. In the present of the novel she ends up in a relationship with a government offical, Ibrahima Sory, who is a descendant of a family which once ruled much of the area. Initially apolitical and refusing to see what is happening in the country, she eventually is forced to realize that she is allied with the oppressors.

Because this was Condé's first novel, and she was also from a Guadaloupean bourgeois family, studied in Paris, and moved to Guinea about the time the novel is set in, critics were quick to consider it as autobiographical and criticize the author for the narcissistic behavior and naive ideas of the protagonist; she says in the preface that Véronica was an "anti-moi" whose ideas and behavior was very different from her own. In an interview quoted in one of the secondary articles I read, she says that only the early life of the protagonist in Guadaloupe was based on her own life but that everything in Africa was quite different; while Véronica, considering herself a victim of colonialism and racism, never realized her own class position and identified with elites in both Paris and Africa, Condé rebelled against her class upbringing and was a political activist. She also remained in Africa for over a decade rather than the three months that the character in the novel stayed. Understanding that Véronica is not Condé, it becomes obvious that she is not intended to be a sympathetic heroine and that the book is critical of the idea that Africa is a "homeland" for the people of the Caribbean.

Today, critics consider the novel to have marked a significant development in Caribbean literature. This is obvious from the five secondary articles I read after finishing the book.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, this book is complicated. It was the last book in my Caribbean Lit class. I didn't read it fully. This is a book about an Antilean woman living in Paris who moves to Africa to reclaim her heritage. She gets involved in the politics and the world there. She's also kinda annoying, doesn’t take sides and only improves by small increments. She is sleeping with the main ruler, Ibrahim Sory and she keeps getting involved with the politics involved. The point I think that Conde is trying to make is I think that you can’t move somewhere else to escape your identity and you definitely can’t get involved in politics that you don’t understand. I think. I think this is a novel where Conde is trying to get some of her issues out so she can write different stuff. Kinda like Joyce did i Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man. And that Veronica is neither wholly African nor Antilean. She tries to understand the African view, kind of, but seems not to fully want to understand it. She sort of embraces her sexuality which is good, but she’s also sleeping with Ibrahim Sory which is not a great choice. She’s had a relationship with a white man which is problematic in terms of where she’s living, but she’s not fully one thing or the other. She also keeps turning a blind eye to the atrocities all around her. Until finally, she can’t, but then she leaves to go to Paris. So even if she has made progress, which I'm not entirely sure she has, she goes back to Paris anyway. There’s class issues in there too. One of her notions is the “bourgeoisie can be black, perfumed and classical music-minded.” Which I’m kinda simplifying. And Conde seems to be doing a critique of African socialism.

So, this book. As I said, it’s complicated. I meant to read it earlier. It’s also a mix of stream of conscious type thoughts, a mix of memory and stuff. Heremakhonon is the place where she hides out and ignores the problems of the city in which she is teaching. I think the biggest problem is that she moves to the this place, but doesn’t seem to want to change or like acclimate to where she is. And she’s coming at a lot of this with a lot of privilege which she doesn’t really to use to help anyone. Which is an important reminder in this time of upheaval to acknowledge your privilege and use your power to help others. If you are interested in branching out and reading Caribbean Literature, there are better novels to read. I'd suggest Beka Lamb and In Times Like These by Zee Edgell, Praise song for the Widow by Marshall, Masters of the Dew by Jaques Romain and the Ripening by Glissant. She writes allright. Some of it’s hard to track because of not knowing the references. I say skip it unless you really want to stretch yourself. If you want to read Caribbean Lit, go with the choices I suggested.
3 1/2-41/2 stars?

[Nicole Gervasio · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a little disappointed in this novel, because I've wanted to read something by Maryse Condé for quite some time. Perhaps it's just not her best, or maybe the main character, Veronica, just rubbed me the wrong way. Veronica is a capricious and cynical anti-hero. She embraces her sexuality, and yet her choice of lover also shames and alienates her. Because she's so self-annihilating, it's hard to relate to her without feeling like she's bringing a lot of petty trouble on herself in the midst of a world of social wrong befalling the less privileged people around her. In the end, I thought the novel was okay, but I wasn't won over by her final conversion and decision to find herself elsewhere again.

[Jayme Horne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Conde's novel explores how colonialism, imperialism, and diaspora can still affect us, even generations later. A beautiful and heartbreaking story about a woman searching for her ancestors, even though her branch had been cut off at the root.

[Mk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hundreds of years of colonialism and capitalism can twist the hell out of our minds.

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“My ancestors led me on… I looked for myself in the wrong place.” Whew! Maryse conde is something else!

[Dr G · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have become quite a fan of Maryse Condé and I think Heremakhonon , her first novel, is possibly my favourite. There is something about her writing which appeals to me. I suppose it is what might be considered pervasive pessimism and negativity, or all-encompassing cynicism – which means there will be many readers to whom she will not appeal.
There are elements of this work which are reflective of elements of Condé’s own life, which is not uncommon in first novels. The protagonist is Veronica Mercier, a reasonably young woman who grew up on French Guadeloupe, her family with slavery background but eventually joining the bourgeoisie. She is highly intelligent and, having been sent to Paris to study, has become an academic. Her comments about her relatives are deliciously tart: “I’m sure they didn’t know a drop of their grandfather’s sperm had started our family line. We, on the other hand, had mounted and embalmed it. It was responsible for my mother’s relatively light skin and Aida’s straight nose. Its long-lasting quality kept us from being as black as coal. We were negresse-rouges.
She has now, somewhat impulsively, taken up an academic role in an institution in a fictional west African nation, which had recently become independent from France.
She is on an existential quest to gain an understanding of herself through immersion in her family’s ancestral homelands. But she does not do much more than immerse herself in order to achieve her quest; consequently it is not achieved.
In fact, she finds herself increasingly alienated from this nation which is experiencing considerable trauma in its post-colonial, post-revolutionary circumstances. She attempts to stay clear of the differing political perspectives and conflicts but is unable to do so, forming alliances with both sides. The nation has a muddle of old, traditional behaviour, ideologically driven thinking, political idealism, and pragmatism. She observes and comments on the various outlooks with a wry cynicism.
To be fair, though, her life in France appears to have been somewhat erratic and unanchored as well. All of which makes Veronica a fascinating character.
Condé is not always easy to follow. There are times when it is not at all clear about which character she is writing, so the names can easily become confused. And she slips from present-time narrative into the past, or vice versa , without signalling that there is a change. “We used to send armfuls of flowers to the village for the altar on Corpus Christi. That was at Hérone where we had our country house and fifteen acres of land. Our caretaker was a sad coolie called Verassamy. A gawky old nomad, unaccustomed to the town, looms up.” The verb tenses do indicate which is past and which, present, but the switch is easily overlooked, and it is easy to read the gawky old nomad as being in France.
Another device which leads to uncertainty is that Condé often writes of Veronica’s thoughts but later makes it apparent that she has spoken these thoughts: “Strange that he gave his sister to Saliou, despite the obvious discrepancies between them. He quickly corrects me. Too quickly, which means I hit home.”
As a consequence, I finished the book, then immediately re-read it in an attempt to clarify who was who and where was where. The second reading, undertaken with the understanding that signals of change of track would not necessarily appear, was much easier to follow.
For all that Veronica is somewhat anarchic – or at least unattached – in her political perspective, she does not hold back on colonialism:
“The hotel keeper is straight out of a third-rate movie. He must have elbowed his way through Indochina, Algeria, and wherever else they butchered the subspecies.”
And included amongst her targets is the human race in general: “The silent majority only emerges from their silence once the bombardment is over. The country in ruins. And the orphaned children running in the ditches. Then they say they have had enough of all this blood as well.”
She does not escape her own barbs. She is pursued by a “mastodon” businessman who cannot join in the widespread corruption to become a minister because he cannot read or write. Her reflection on rejecting him: “This is missing from my collection, an illiterate lover.”
She does not propose a simple critique wherein only the Europeans were to blame for slavery:
“’From the West Indies? Well, that’s nice. One of the children that Africa lost…’/ Sold, Mwalimwana, sold. Not lost. Tegbessu got 400 pounds sterling per boatload.”
And there are many indications that, post-colonialism, matters are not bright and rosy:
“Their uniforms are made in Egypt. Their arms in the USA. Trained by Russians. Lest we forget Mwalimwana is nonaligned.”
And, “Mwalimwana is the most savage monster in history…His close collaborators are corrupt and bloodthirsty, prepared to do anything to hold onto their power. The worst of all is Ibrahima Sory.”
For as much as Veronica is ambivalent in her sympathies and allegiances, both the government and the Institute assume she has sold out to the other side.
I have never much liked Richard Philcox’s translations of Condé’s work. From his misplaced apostrophe in “DC-10’s” to his oddly intrusive footnotes: “What I need to see life through rose-colored glasses is a good fuck.*” with the footnote, “*In English in the original.”
However, he does not intrude much. And we are still left with some fine writing in the presentation of an engrossing novel:
“The sun decides to move. Without hurrying. It’s going to take hours to cross the sky. To descend to meet the sea, which will gradually lose its deep rich colour like a washed out indigo cloth that borders on blue.”

[Seth Wells · Rating 4 out of 5]

Veronica is equally problematic as she is fascinating. Conde demonstrates how polarizing a literal story can be (how it can be told). I can see why people hate this. I can see why people say it’s hard to read. I can see why people see it as a reflection of condes lives experiences in Africa. I, however, choose to read it as a story that is asks questions it can’t answer but is forced to answer in order to actually ask the question. Veronica has to be that way (or might be((condition of possibility) so that we are allowed to ask ourselves what we think!!! Veronica doesn’t have to be right or know the answers or be a revolutionary!! there are parts of the book I didn’t love but it’s a fucking novel not a manifesto. Conde was obviously tremendously smart and what she chose to do with her wealth of literary/historical/interpersonal knowledge (sardonic fiction) is tremendously valuable if we let ourselves take a step back. Thought over.

[2TReads · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy Condé's characters. She always explores their desires and shortcomings. Veronica moves from France to an unnamed West African country, young in its self-governance. She goes expecting to find her 'identity', having grown up in Guadeloupe and experienced the racial prejudice as a darker-skinned girl that permeated "postcolonial" societies at the time.

Veronica has witty comebacks and is acerbic in her dialogue, which I enjoyed. But as she settles into her job and among the people who she grows close to, as well as starts a romantic affair, she begins to realize that the paradise she searches for might not exist.

There is a revolutionary spirit growing, especially among the university youths and the repercussions fall close to home for Veronica who learns that the only true way of knowing the political landscape of a country is to live there and experience it as it happens before you.

[David Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oui, très bien écrit - pas une surprise. Mais j'ai enlevé une étoile parce que j'en ai marre d’être déprimer par la politique en Afrique. Ce n'est pas la faute de Maryse Condé - elle mérite 5 étoiles pour En Attendant le Bonheur, mais le monde n'est pas juste. Je connais trop bien la scène dont elle décrit. Ça ne s’améliore pas - ni en Afrique, ni ailleurs. Nous vivons une époque sombre et noire. Il me faut une petite pause avant de prendre un autre Condé, mais, évidemment, je vais le faire.

[Brenda Conry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my introduction to Condé and her first novel. It took me half the book to understand her dialogue format, and longer to be drawn into the story. Also, the translation may not have done justice to her expression. I'm not equipped to comment on that. I will still try more of her work in the future. I know next to nothing about Guadalope, and the turmoil of newly liberated African nations. Her style may have been one way to deliver the sense of confusion people were living through then.

[Wachia Kayanda]

This is Maryse Conde's first book, yes?
At first I thought it read much like a first book of a not yet well-seasoned author. The character of Veronica is self-absorbed and melancholic but the more I read the more I realized this is a book about Africa from a different perspective. Not the romanticized pre-colonial Out of Africa kind and not the romanticized strife kind either.

[LaToya Jefferson-James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply put, I love this book. I love this writer. The confusion, the alienation, and the anger are real. It is like reading a diary or an honest journal day-by-day.

[Charlotte Côté-Hamel · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.3

[Blanche Drapeau · Rating 1 out of 5]

Histoire compliqué. Vraiment pas de mon genre. Maryse Conde est une écrivaine bien respectée mais elle n’as pas captivé mon intérêt.

[Audrey Lockie]

this was incredible. an almost excessively grim sense of humor begetting a scathing indictment of identity.

[Lejla · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't think I "got it."

[Max Heimowitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this book may be groundbreaking work in the field of postcolonial theory/literature, it was certainly not an easy read, for its meandering plotline... generally another one of those books for school that felt like a slog to get through. Perhaps had I been able to read it in the original French I would have enjoyed it much more, as this could've been a fault of the translation, but I honestly didn't enjoy this one all that much. I should probably check out more of Condé's work, though.

Clearly I didn't retain that much from my reading of this book, except that there's this very strange scene(s) toward the end of the book with a gay man at a club, if I remember correctly, that felt out of place? Not really sure what to say here, as I do not remember a lot of the plot. Oops.

Read for FREN 412, Postcolonial Theory and Literature, Spring 2021

[Melissa Benbow · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay. The protagonist wasn't likable. The narrative structure was a bit hard to follow. I think that's because the protagonist's self-absorption affected the way she explains the events that make up the book. This is not a book of transformation, and there isn't necessarily a resolution, but that's the point. Thematically, this book covers a lot; pan-Africanism, identity, gender, negritude, travel narrative are just a couple examples.

[Kat · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I was in school, I'd write a Fanonian interpretation of this book. Luckily, I'm not in school. I know that the apathy of the main character is intentional, but it makes it no less tedious.

[Randi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just okay.