Les Petits-Fils nègres de Vercingétorix

by Alain Mabanckou

Ancienne colonie française d'Afrique centrale, la république du Viétongo est en proie à une terrible guerre civile. Le président Lebou Kabouya, Sudiste, a perdu le pouvoir après le coup d'Etat du Nordiste le général Edou et de ses milices gouvernementales, les Anacondas, et de factions armées : les Romains. Le chef rebelle sudiste, Vercingétorix, aidé des Petits-Fils nègres, se lance dans une entreprise de reconquête jusqu'à l'intérieur des familles mixtes. Fuyant les violences avec sa fille, Hortense Iloki tient des cahiers où elle relate les événements de cette guerre et reconstitue son passé en miettes. Dans ce roman de guerre, de déchirures et de persécutions, plongé dans les affres de l'après-décolonisation, Alain Mabanckou évoque à mots couverts le Congo quitté il y a près de quinze ans. La France y est omniprésente, à la fois dans l'héritage culturel et dans cette colonisation des esprits. Classique, ample et souple, l'écriture d'Alain Mabanckou est sans doute l'une des plus belles et novatrices de la jeune littérature africaine.

Genres: Africa

262 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Alain Mabanckou was born in 1966 in Congo-Brazzaville (French Congo). He currently resides in Los Angeles, where he teaches literature at UCLA, having previously spent four years at the University of Michigan. Mabanckou will be a Fellow in the Humanities Council at Princeton University in 2007-2008. One of Francophone Africa's most prolific contemporary writers, he is the author of six volumes of poetry and six novels. He received the Sub-Saharan Africa Literary Prize in 1999 for his first novel, Blue-White-Red, the Prize of the Five Francophone Continents for Broken Glass, and the Prix Renaudot in 2006 for Memoirs of a Porcupine. He was selected by the French publishing trade journal Lire as one of the fifty writers to watch out for in the coming century. His most recent book is African Psycho.

Reviews

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a 'life during wartime' novel concerned more with the lives of those displaced and derailed rather than the war itself, set in the fictional 'Republic of Vietongo' (a scathing combination of 'Vietcong' and 'Congo'), .and modeled on the author's home of Congo-Brazzaville (not DRC, which is to the east, and is the former Zaire).

Congo-Brazzaville has a very clear north-south dvide, and that political conflict drives the story.
The protagonist is Hortense, whose notebook entries provide the narrative. She is from the north, but has married a southerner, Kimbembé, who has travelled north to teach in her native langauge of Oweto. Now, the civil war has driven them south for some refuge, along with their seventeen-year-old daughter, Maribé.

As the novel progresses she is set on heading back north, but all roads are controlled by a barbaric group of southern loyalists, called the Negro Grandsons, of the former prime minister, Vercingetorix, who leads the southern cause against the northern militants.

On route, they take stock at the house of a local old woman, Mam'Soko. The tension builds, broken only by the contrast of more relaxed reflections of earlier times before the war.

It is a very powerful story, and another example of Mabanckou's excellent writing, though sadly, it is a tale of displaced people in wartime that has been told many times before. It is, understandably, lighter on the humour than other of Mabanckou's novels, but nonetheless, and important piece of literature.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m grateful to the author for having told the story of civil war from the viewpoint of women, as they generally are most affected and least empowered during war. Still, it’s unusual for men to write in women’s voices with the rich depth that women are able. This is the only criticism I have of this powerful work. A single ego-driven man disrupted life for an entire country to gain power. The novel used a woman’s journal to demonstrate how easy it was to turn a contented life into hell. Her resilience was remarkable. I’m amazed at how strong people can be.

[Daniel Polansky]

A woman documents the division and collapse of her country, family.

[katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ce livre m'a intéressé dans l'histoire du conflit au Congo. L'auteur utilise la forme d'un journal pour raconter les événements de la façon dont une femme au nord pourraient subir en raison de son mariage avec l'un des sud. J'ai bien aimé la description de la nature ici, en plus des éléments de la culture noire et de l'éducation européenne qu'ils ont reçu. L'histoire met en lumière les changements radicaux qui peuvent survenir entre les personnes de plus de la politique.