Itinéraires (Jul 2019)
Achille Ngoye et Jean-Roger Essomba : le renouveau du polar africain francophone
Abstract
In African literary history, whether in the colonial novel, the family romance, or the novel of solitary revolt, the African novel has generally been considered realistic. However, in the early eighties new genres and authors challenged the reign of the realistic novel, giving birth to the African detective novel. Some of the crime novels in Africa have renewed aesthetics by introducing sorcery and the paranormal into the plots. To that effect, this article offers a reading of Achille Ngoye’s Sorcellerie à bout portant and Jean-Roger Essomba’s Les Lanceurs de foudre as novels that recast Francophone African crime fiction. By underlining the intersection between politics and aesthetics in these novels, my aim will be to highlight the ways in which these novels bring together witchcraft and immigration. Ultimately, I will contend that this revival of African fiction seeks to interrogate the place of Africa and Africans in the distribution of the sensible, thus hinting at the coming-of-age of a new form of what I term the political Bildungsroman that is specific to the African context.
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