Overview

The epic 1968 Malian novel that scandalized a generation, by the first African winner of the Prix Renaudot Envisioned as a criticism of and insider's guide to African history, this dark, pugancious epic, spanning the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries, recounts the fate of the imaginary empire of Nakem. With its acerbic pen portraits of the dynasty of devious, asp-wielding Saifs who reign in Nakem; visiting white exploiters and saviours; and persecuted citizens - especially the tragicomic, Paris-educated hero Raymond-Spartacus Kassoumi - Bound to Violence is a biting satire of unusual and alarming power. In this new edition, professor and award-winning documentary filmmaker Cherif Keita provides invaluable context for the novel, whose publication in the West was mired by accusations of plagiarism fraught with racist undertones. What emerges is a thrillingly excessive, defiant novel that paints a universally relevant portrait of sex, violence and power in human relationships.

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9780241680803

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Ouologuem delineates white savagery as precisely as he shows intrablack conflicts... His novel is something like a skyscraper. It has multi-levels, a variety of actions, characters, and scenes... A bone-chilling black satire * New York Times * Conveys, through Ralph Manheim's translation, a startling energy of language.... The intelligence expressed by the book seems all too withering, all too Gallic -- John Updike * The New Yorker *

Author Information

Yambo Ouologuem (Author) Yambo Ouologuem was a Malian writer born into an aristocratic family. His poetry has been anthologized in Poems of Black Africa, edited by Wole Soyinka, and The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry, edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier. Met with critical acclaim in France, Ouologuem won the Renaudot Prize for his debut novel, Bound to Violence. He died in 2017. Ralph Manheim (Translator) Ralph Manheim was a Jewish-American translator of German and French literature. He translated the works of Louis-Ferdinand Celine, G nter Grass, Peter Handke, Martin Heidegger and Hermann Hesse, among others. Manheim received the 1964 PEN Translation Prize, the 1970 National Book Award in the Translation category and a 1983 MacArthur Fellowship in Literary Studies. He won the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, a major lifetime achievement award in the field of translation, in 1988. He died in 1992.

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