The most secret memory of men

 

Malian writer, whose most famous novel, Le Devoir de violence (1968, Bound to Violence), is a satirical portrayal of African spiritual values. Yambo  Ouologuem depicted African participation in colonial rule and the role of local overlords who sold their subjects into bondage in league with Arab slave dealers.

This postmodernist work was published to great acclaim in Paris and it received the prestigious Prix Th�ophraste-Renaudot. Its originality was questioned when critics noticed similarities between Ouologuem's text and paragraphs of Graham Greene's Its a Battlefield (1934) and Andr� Schwarz-Bart's Le Dernier des Justes (1959, The Last of the Just).

Cannibal or not cannibal
Speak up
Ah you think yourself clever
And try to look proud

Now we'll see you get what's coming to you
What is your last word
Poor condemned man
('When Negro Teeth Speak' by Ouologuem Yambo, in The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry, edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier