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pogseu's review against another edition
5.0
Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote (or in the original French, En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages) is a satirical novel which mainly focuses on a semi-fictitious dictator named Koyaga. I say semi-fictitious because his character was most certainly based on former President of Togo Gnassingbé Eyadéma who came into power (or rather, who took power) in 1967 and remained in power until his death in 2005. The country is now in the hands of his son, Faure Gnassingbé, who inherited the “throne” at first, before being rightfully elected according to UN and independent observers, and Faure has been in power since 2005... But the book was first published in 1998, while the father was still very much alive and very much in power. There is towards the end the tale of his 30th anniversary celebrations and that would have happened a mere year prior to the publishing of the novel.
What I loved about this wonderful book was the beauty of the language. Someone here criticised the fact that the text is very repetitive. For my part, I see it as a strength rather than a weakness, and I believe that it is a deliberate choice which I personally enjoyed just as much as I enjoy a chorus in Greek tragedies or the inevitably formulaic language in the Iliad and the Odyssey, for instance.
This is oral traditions being laid on paper. The repetitions are the necessary anchors for the storytellers to know how and where to go from one section to the next.
The repetitions really transported me to the veillées (wakes I suppose they would be called in English?), picturing myself amongst the people taking part, as the role of each (vocal) participant is explained at length in the very beginning (and this turned out to be very useful later on in the book when I really adopted the rhythm of the text and came back to the beginning, rereading about each character’s role and hence acquiring a better understanding of who was doing what and for what purpose during these traditional “purifying” (purificatoire) wakes.
Now, what was particularly interesting was the fact that to tell the story of one dictator, the storyteller goes back to the beginning, i.e. to the dictator’s parents, which luckily for us meant going back to the early days of colonisation. And the book truly focuses on the dictator Koyaga in the second half of the novel, after having provided the readers with a full picture of colonisation and decolonisation, of how France with at its head the General de Gaulle, put into place puppet heads of states in its former colonies to avoid the sorts of massacres they had faced, most notably in North Africa.
The way of thinking of the Superior Whites when it comes to the stupid Blacks is written with such humour, yet I can see how it may be cringeworthy for some readers. Let’s just say that Ahmadou Kourouma does not hold back, nor does he pull his punches.
I would highly recommend this novel to anyone interested in African literature, satirical writing, and who enjoys more challenging reads.
What I loved about this wonderful book was the beauty of the language. Someone here criticised the fact that the text is very repetitive. For my part, I see it as a strength rather than a weakness, and I believe that it is a deliberate choice which I personally enjoyed just as much as I enjoy a chorus in Greek tragedies or the inevitably formulaic language in the Iliad and the Odyssey, for instance.
This is oral traditions being laid on paper. The repetitions are the necessary anchors for the storytellers to know how and where to go from one section to the next.
The repetitions really transported me to the veillées (wakes I suppose they would be called in English?), picturing myself amongst the people taking part, as the role of each (vocal) participant is explained at length in the very beginning (and this turned out to be very useful later on in the book when I really adopted the rhythm of the text and came back to the beginning, rereading about each character’s role and hence acquiring a better understanding of who was doing what and for what purpose during these traditional “purifying” (purificatoire) wakes.
Now, what was particularly interesting was the fact that to tell the story of one dictator, the storyteller goes back to the beginning, i.e. to the dictator’s parents, which luckily for us meant going back to the early days of colonisation. And the book truly focuses on the dictator Koyaga in the second half of the novel, after having provided the readers with a full picture of colonisation and decolonisation, of how France with at its head the General de Gaulle, put into place puppet heads of states in its former colonies to avoid the sorts of massacres they had faced, most notably in North Africa.
The way of thinking of the Superior Whites when it comes to the stupid Blacks is written with such humour, yet I can see how it may be cringeworthy for some readers. Let’s just say that Ahmadou Kourouma does not hold back, nor does he pull his punches.
I would highly recommend this novel to anyone interested in African literature, satirical writing, and who enjoys more challenging reads.
harryr's review
4.0
Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote is the life story of President Koyaga, the dictator of the (fictional) République du Golfe, as told to him by his court storyteller Bingo.
Bingo is in some ways the ultimate unreliable narrator, portraying Koyaga as a heroic, semi-mythical figure protected by powerful magic, but he is accompanied by an apprentice whose role is to speak truth to power. The result is a portrayal of post-colonial African politics which is brutal, and darkly comic.
It has the sprawling rhythms of oral storytelling, with its repetitions and parallelism, which makes it difficult to pick an excerpt which does it justice and is short enough for me to type out. But this will do: it’s a part of an account of Koyaga’s triumphal march across the country after surviving a coup.
At the entrance to a far-off village, the hunters take the initiative of offering you — since you are a sinbo, a donsoba (a master hunter) — the shoulder of a slaughtered bubale. At the next village there are shoulders, haunches, heads. At the village after that, there is a stinking mound of animal carcasses of every species: deer, monkeys, even elephants. Above the pile, the canopy of trees is black with vultures. In the sky, carrion birds attack each other with terrifying cries. Packs of hyenas, lycaons, lions follow and threaten.
The order is given that hunters should no longer offer you the shoulders of game killed by the hunters that week, need not gratify the master hunter who is their guest as their code of brotherhood demands.
In another village, to set itself apart, the sacrificial priest does not stop at two chickens and a goat, he offers four chickens, two goats and an ox to the manes of the ancestors. The sacrificial priests in neighbouring villages follow suit, they outdo him, they go too far. Soon there are twenty oxen and as many goats and forty chickens. The sacrifice becomes interminable, it is a veritable hecatomb. A call goes out for a limit to be set on the number of sacrificial victims.
Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote is my book from Côte d’Ivoire for the Read The World challenge.
Bingo is in some ways the ultimate unreliable narrator, portraying Koyaga as a heroic, semi-mythical figure protected by powerful magic, but he is accompanied by an apprentice whose role is to speak truth to power. The result is a portrayal of post-colonial African politics which is brutal, and darkly comic.
It has the sprawling rhythms of oral storytelling, with its repetitions and parallelism, which makes it difficult to pick an excerpt which does it justice and is short enough for me to type out. But this will do: it’s a part of an account of Koyaga’s triumphal march across the country after surviving a coup.
At the entrance to a far-off village, the hunters take the initiative of offering you — since you are a sinbo, a donsoba (a master hunter) — the shoulder of a slaughtered bubale. At the next village there are shoulders, haunches, heads. At the village after that, there is a stinking mound of animal carcasses of every species: deer, monkeys, even elephants. Above the pile, the canopy of trees is black with vultures. In the sky, carrion birds attack each other with terrifying cries. Packs of hyenas, lycaons, lions follow and threaten.
The order is given that hunters should no longer offer you the shoulders of game killed by the hunters that week, need not gratify the master hunter who is their guest as their code of brotherhood demands.
In another village, to set itself apart, the sacrificial priest does not stop at two chickens and a goat, he offers four chickens, two goats and an ox to the manes of the ancestors. The sacrificial priests in neighbouring villages follow suit, they outdo him, they go too far. Soon there are twenty oxen and as many goats and forty chickens. The sacrifice becomes interminable, it is a veritable hecatomb. A call goes out for a limit to be set on the number of sacrificial victims.
Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote is my book from Côte d’Ivoire for the Read The World challenge.
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