Francophone African Narratives and the Anglo-American Book Market: Ferment on the Fringes (After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France) 1793617783, 9781793617781

Citation preview

Francophone African Narratives and the Anglo-American Book Market

After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France Series Editor: Valérie K. Orlando, University of Maryland Advisory Board Robert Bernasconi, Memphis University; Claire H. Griffiths, University of Chester, UK; Alec Hargreaves, Florida State University; Chima Korieh, Rowan University; Mildred Mortimer, University of Colorado, Boulder; Obioma Nnaemeka, Indiana University; Alison Rice, University of Notre Dame; Kamal Salhi, University of Leeds; Tracy D. SharpleyWhiting, Vanderbilt University; Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, Tulane University

Recent Titles Francophone African Narratives and the Anglo-American Book Market: Ferment on the Fringes by Vivan Steemers Ethnic Minority Women’s Writing in France: Publishing Practices and Identity Formation (1998-2005) by Claire Mouflard Theory, Aesthetics, and Politics in the Francophone World: Filiations Past and Future by Rajeshwari S. Vallury Refiguring Les Années Noires: Literary Representations of the Nazi Occupation by Kathy Comfort Paris and the Marginalized Author: Treachery, Alienation, Queerness, and Exile by Valérie K. Orlando and Pamela A. Pears French Orientalist Literature in Algeria, 1845–1882: Colonial Hauntings by Sage Goellner Corporeal Archipelagos: Writing the Body in Francophone Oceanian Women’s Literature by Julia Frengs Spaces of Creation: Transculturality and Feminine Expression in Francophone Literature by Allison Connolly Women Writers of Gabon: Literature and Herstory by Cheryl Toman Backwoodsmen as Ecocritical Motif in French Canadian Literature: Connecting Worlds in the Wilds by Anne Rehill Intertextual Weaving in the Work of Linda Lê: Imagining the Ideal Reader by Alexandra Kurmann Front Cover Iconography and Algerian Women’s Writing: Heuristic Implications of the Recto-Verso Effect by Pamela A. Pears The Algerian War in French-Language Comics: Postcolonial Memory, History, and Subjectivity by Jennifer Howell

Francophone African Narratives and the Anglo-American Book Market Ferment on the Fringes

Vivan Steemers

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2021 The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. Chapter 2, Vivan Steemers (2018) Publishing francophone African narratives in English: a short history, Journal of the African Literature Association © African Literature Association, reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd. An earlier version of part of chapter 3 appeared in Nouvelles Editions Francophones 32-1 (2017), University of Nebraska Press. An earlier version of chapter 5 appeared in Research in African Literatures vol. 50, no. 2 (2019). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-7936-1778-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-7936-1779-8 (electronic) ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

In Loving Memory of Theo C. Steemers (1930–2018)

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

ix

Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1 Francophone African Narratives in a French and Global Publishing Landscape

31

2 Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

63

3 Literary Awards for Minority Authors and Their Impact on Further Consecration

101

4 Early Female Writing and Its Reception on the Anglo-American Book Market

131

5 Transnational Reception and Appropriation of René Maran’s Batouala 169 Conclusion 199 Appendix 1: Corpus Narratives and Translations

207

Appendix 2: Categorization of Mainstream Publishers in France

217

Appendix 3: Specialized Publishers of French Corpus Narratives

221

Appendix 4: Table A—French to English Translation Awards

223

Appendix 5: Table B—Any-Language-to-English Translation Awards/Grants and Foreign Fiction Awards

225

vii

viii

Contents

Appendix 6: Table C—Literary Translation Prizes/Awards: Gender and Minority Representation in Corpus Narratives

229

Bibliography 231 Index 251 About the Author

263

List of Figures and Tables

FIGURES Figure 0.1 The White Negress II by Constantin Brancusi. 2 Figure 1.1 Location of Publication of (118) Original French Corpus Narratives (1921–2017) 38 Figure 1.2 Number of Original French Publications and English Translations of Corpus Narratives Published per FiveYear Intervals (1921–2017) 40 Figure 1.3 Original French Publications (118) per Publisher Category (1921–2017) 42 Figure 1.4 Number of Publications per Decade of Original French Corpus Narratives (118) per Publisher Category (1921–2017) 44 Figure 1.5 Average Time Lag in Number of Years per Decade between the Original French Publication and the First English Translation of 118 Corpus Narratives (1921–2017) 54 Figure 2.1 Overall Contribution per Publisher Category of (132) English Translations/Editions of Corpus Narratives (1921–2017) 68 Figure 2.2 Contribution per Decade of Publisher Category of (132) English Translations/Editions of Corpus Narratives (1921–2017) 69 Figure 2.3 Dominant Theme per Decade of (122) Translations of Corpus Narratives (1921–2017) 84

ix

x

List of Figures and Tables

Figure 3.1 Number of Literary Prizes Awarded per Prize Category and per Five-Year Interval to the Original French Publications of (118) Corpus Narratives (1921–2017)

108

TABLES Table 2.1 Number and Percentage of (118) Corpus Narratives Available in English Translation per Publisher Category and According to Format (in 2017) Table 4.1 Overview of the Original Publications and English Translations of the First Six Francophone Sub-Saharan Corpus Narratives by Women Appendix 4 Table A—French to English Translation Awards Appendix 5 Table B—Any-Language-to-English Translation Awards/Grants and Foreign Fiction Awards Appendix 6 Table C—Literary Translation Prizes/Awards: Gender and Minority Representation in Corpus Narratives

80 135 223 225 229

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to the following friends and colleagues for their suggestions and comments during different stages of the preparation of this book: Kenneth Harrow, Wilma Houwers, Mariam Konate, Molly Lynde-Recchia, Marcela Mendoza, Ieme van der Poel, Christine Pruden, Cynthia Running-Johnson, Allen Webb, and Kristina Wirtz. My thanks also go to Western Michigan University for granting me a research leave and funding my travel to various conferences and archives. Finally, thank you to my friends and family for their encouragement, and particularly to my husband Michel for his unwavering support.

xi

Introduction

THE WHITE NEGRESS II In the spring of 2018, I visited the modern wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, lately the home of the museum’s twentieth- and twenty-first-century art collection. Among the exhibited works of art, one sculpture in particular caught my attention: The White Negress II (1928) by the Romanian-born French sculptor Constantin Brancusi (see Figure 0.1). It was no coincidence that I was transfixed by the spectacle of the stylized “negress” head with its protruding lips and tight chignon, fashioned in smooth, gleaming white marble, for I had been researching for some time the material for chapter 4 of this study, “Early Female Writing and its Reception on the Anglo-American Book Market.” At that specific instance, prior to investigating the canonical, early twentieth-century sculptor’s work and life, Brancusi’s sculpture captured for me the core of my recent research: the appropriation of a quintessentially African representation as seen by a European modernist artist, selecting and aggrandizing some features that epitomized, in his view of course, the essence of a “negress.” The quirky twist of this work that intrigues its beholders initially is the whiteness of the marble head as opposed to the blackness that one might expect, given the subject matter. My reaction to and interpretation of the sculpture were obviously colored by my recent discovery of the deformation that some narratives by sub-Saharan African female writers had been subjected to in their presentation on the Anglo-American book market. The sculptor’s artistic representation of a “negress” hinted at a similar “remodeling.” My fascination for this sculpture prompted me to do some research on the origins of its creation, as well as the sculptor’s role in the international avant-garde art scene during the first half of the twentieth century. 1

2

Introduction

Figure 0.1  The White Negress II by Constantin Brancusi. © Succession Brancusi—All Rights Reserved (ARS) 2020.

Between 1923 and 1933 Brancusi (1876–1957) produced a series of similar female heads, both in white marble (The White Negress) and in bronze (The Blond Negress). According to Sidney Geist, both types of female figures were inspired by seeing a beautiful black girl in Marseilles. Brancusi distilled her ethnic features to prominent lips, balanced at the neck by a shape denoting a scarf and by a small chignon atop the head. As always, he wanted to express an inner, universal beauty underlying the vagaries of outer guise, which he achieved here by changing the color of the girl from black to white or blond. The White Negress and The Blond Negress are not statements about skin color at all; they transform the skin to reveal inner radiance. (63)

Indeed, Brancusi’s ability to capture the essence of things, to distill them to a higher degree of abstraction, to seize “that which is birdlike in all birds”

Introduction

3

(Chave quotes Ezra Pound, one of Brancusi’s greatest contemporary admirers; 177) led him to emerge as “a latter-day Platonist who succeeded in transcending individual and ephemeral states of mind to arrive at the eternal and the universal in works embodying pure, essential form” (Chase 41). The encounter with a stunning black girl as the source of the sculptor’s inspiration—as suggested by Geist in the above quotation—serves as a plausible explanation for Brancusi’s choice of subject, thereby diminishing the influence of primitivism affecting a whole generation of avant-garde artists, such as Gauguin, Picasso, and Léger. Although Brancusi’s early work was profoundly affected by the magical power of primitivism, by the time the sculptor created The White Negress II he had disavowed his affinity with African art.1 However, in view of their titles and subject matter, Brancusi’s sculptures of African women, including their bases—the “netherworld” as Chave refers to them, combining stone and wooden supports—are certainly reminiscent of the tribal art that influenced many European modernist artists since the beginning of the twentieth century. In this sculpture, as in others, Brancusi explored unexpected and unconventional combinations, creating a “figure fraught with contradictory cultural signifiers underlined by the title’s impossible suggestion of a Caucasian Negro” (Chave 187). That this noteworthy mixture of “cultural signifiers” is then variously perceived and interpreted by viewers is significant, but not surprising. It is equally predictable and not less meaningful that this particular sculpture by “the most important and original sculptor of this [twentieth] century” (Shanes 7) is eventually selected to be on display in one of the most distinguished American museums of art.2 Although Brancusi remained an outsider, a marginal, on the modernist Parisian art scene—“the son of illiterate peasants hailing from the undeveloped and culturally mongrel outer reaches of Europe” (Chave 20)—his sculptures were embraced with enthusiasm in the United States where he first participated in the Armory Show, the International Exhibition of Modern Art, in 1913. But let us for a moment go back to another exhibition, “‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern,” held at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York during the winter of 1984–1985, where “tribal objects” were on display side by side with modernist art by Picasso, Giacometti, Brancusi, and others. Analyzing the implications of this juxtaposition in the exhibition, James Clifford comments that around 1910 Picasso and his cohort of modernist artists acknowledge that “primitive” objects constitute powerful art. Inspired by the aesthetics of African sculptures, these artists are able to move beyond the naturalism that had defined Western art since the Renaissance. “Conceptualism” and “abstraction” are, in fact, the qualities that form a common denominator of the displayed objects. Nevertheless, Clifford notes that the non-Western artifacts—presented in

4

Introduction

the MOMA exhibition without their original context—had been carefully selected on the grounds of their resemblance to modernist art. The result is not only the construction of an allegory between the tribal and modernist art but also the appropriation of the former: “Nowhere [. . .] does the exhibition or catalogue underline a more disquieting equality of modernism: its taste for appropriating or redeeming otherness, for constituting non-Western arts in its own image, the discovering universal, ahistorical ‘human’ capacities” (193; emphasis added). The redefinition of non-Western artifacts by the modern West was characterized by Clifford as a “taxonomic shift,” that, not coincidentally, occurred at a moment of high colonialism when tribal peoples “came massively under European political, economic, and evangelical dominion” (196–197). As will be demonstrated in what follows, the gestures of selection, re-presentation—in the sense of a newly constructed presentation—and appropriation similarly determined to a large extent the trajectories of francophone African narratives beyond their original linguistic and cultural borders. BATOUALA, THE BEGINNING OF A NEW LITERATURE During the period of high colonialism mentioned above, we witness the emergence of the first francophone3 (sub-Saharan) African novel on the French literary scene by another “marginal, a primitive and [. . .] exotic” (epithets used by Chave to refer to Brancusi; 20), that is, the Martinican-born René Maran. His novel, Batouala, véritable roman nègre (Batouala, a true negro novel),4 published in Paris in 1921 by Albin Michel, has been designated as the “acte de naissance” (“birth certificate”; Schifano 13) of francophone African literature published in France, while as an author Maran has been hailed by Léopold Sédar Senghor as the precursor of Negritude and the pioneer of black writers publishing in French (Kesteloot 83). Yet Batouala’s publication would have attracted little attention if it had not been awarded one of the most prestigious French literary prizes, the prix Goncourt. It was Maran himself who blamed its contentious reception on the publicity of the text that followed the Goncourt nomination, causing a scandal and eliciting questions in French parliament, consequences that far exceeded his intentions (Egonu 540). Although the text itself painted a critical and dismal picture of Africans living under colonial rule in Equatorial French Africa where Maran had been working since 1909 as an administrator, the most vicious attacks by the French literary establishment were aimed at its preface in which Maran detailed in no uncertain terms the damaging effects of colonialism and its accomplices, the colonial administrators. A year after publication, his controversial award-winning testimony had been translated into five languages.

Introduction

5

The keen interest that this work aroused in the United States, at least within specific circles of critics, echoed the American reception of Brancusi’s sculptures a few years previously: Batouala received “rave reviews from all quarters of the ‘New Negro’ movement” (B. Edwards 69).5 Arguably as much a marginal figure as Brancusi within his specific artistic field in France—but considerably more conspicuous and controversial as a result of the consecration by the Goncourt prize—Maran garnered favorable acclaim for his first novel by American critics, albeit for questionable motives. The vicissitudes of Batouala’s reception in France and within the American literary space illustrate the extratextual forces that potentially have a significant bearing on the transnational trajectory of a francophone subSaharan text. From its initial publication in the capital of the colonial empire to its translation and subsequent integration in a foreign linguistic and cultural context, the “realities of power and authority” (Said 5), that is, French and American agents and agencies, produced, legitimized, and consecrated the literary work. The Western institutional and critical discourses presented and interpreted the text for both the readers of the original as well as the translated work, thus conditioning its reception in the respective linguistic and cultural spaces. Batouala’s itinerary demonstrates exemplarily the legitimizing roles of all agents involved in its production and afterlife: a Parisian publisher who determines the paratext (including the contentious subtitle “a true negro novel” and the prefatory material); a committee awarding a literary prize (the prix Goncourt); journalistic critics who present the text to their readers (either vilifying or extolling the work, thus influencing the potential readers’ perception as well as feeding the controversy); a translator (rewriting the original and selecting translation strategies—Batouala went through three translations into English); a foreign publisher (who invests in a translation and creates a new paratext); and finally critics of the translation (presenting the work in its new literary space and appropriating it by emphasizing a newfound local interpretation, as was the case with the “New Negro” movement). A SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH This study examines the trajectories of a corpus of 118 francophone subSaharan narratives published since the early 1920s—a mere “fringe” of world literature, spear-headed by Batouala—that is subsequently translated into English, in order to examine what circumstances accelerated or impeded the international visibility of these texts from (post)colonial peripheries. By taking a materialist perspective on the production and reception of a rigorously circumscribed corpus of narratives that crosses both linguistic and cultural boundaries, my main argument is that specific agents and agencies were

6

Introduction

pivotal in galvanizing its recognition and dissemination. Taking my cue in the first instance from Pierre Bourdieu, my sociological approach aims beyond the purely textual or literary analysis and attempts to explore the role of individual and institutional agents—publishing houses, editors, preface writers, critics, juries of literary awards, translators—that structure both the national literary fields as well as the international literary space where the symbolic capital under consideration circulates. Put simply, an essential question of this study, to speak with Emily Apter, constitutes: “How do some works gain international visibility and others do not?” Part of the answer as to what determines the international canon, contends Apter, is “the constraints imposed by what is translated” (1). For the initial description of the formal aspects analyzing the (not only translational) “constraints,” or to approach it positively, the facilitating circumstances that confer recognition, prestige, and an afterlife to the corpus narratives, this study engages with some fertile Bourdieusian concepts of the production of cultural goods. The agents and institutions involved in the original literary production of our African corpus initially operate predominantly, as will be demonstrated, within the national (hexagonal) French field of literary production.6 In this relatively autonomous field, struggles take place for power and prestige, that is, for the acquisition of specific symbolic capital (Bourdieu, Choses dites 169–70). In a second instance, the translated work is incorporated in an anglophone field of cultural production, defined by a different set of power dimensions. One of the most influential agents of literary production is the publishing institution whose reputation—related to its position in the field—determines part of the symbolic value—recognition, prestige, and consecration—attached to the published book. A literary work hallmarked by the esteemed French publishing firm Gallimard, for instance, will inevitably generate more attention from critics, committees of literary awards as well as international editors than one put into circulation by a small-scale specialized publisher such as Présence Africaine. The description of “cultural mediators and arbitrators of quality and taste” as applied to publishers by John Thompson (Merchants 8) characterizes, in fact, all agents involved in the field of literary production that determine aesthetic value. The latter is defined by Randal Johnson in his introduction to Bourdieu’s The Field of Cultural Production: “Aesthetic value, itself socially constituted, is radically contingent on a very complex and constantly changing set of circumstances involving multiple social and institutional factors. Literature, art and their respective producers do not exist independently of a complex institutional framework which authorizes, enables, empowers and legitimizes them” (10) (emphasis added). This “very complex and constantly changing set of circumstances” compels us to analyze not only the different types of agents involved in literary production at a particular moment in time but also their diachronic position and functioning as these evolve over time. What

Introduction

7

type of publishing houses—mainstream, specialized, educational or university press, and so on—engages in the publication of the corpus narratives and how has this publishing landscape developed since the early 1920s, both with respect to the original publication as well as the anglophone translation of our corpus narratives? What agents and institutions (or authorities) possess the power to accrue symbolic value to the literary texts that subsequently cross linguistic and cultural boundaries and enter the anglophone field as a translated literary product? It is these social dimensions driving the transfer and dissemination of translations and representing symbolic or cultural capital that will be explored in the current project. Applying Bourdieu’s field theory to the global literary space, Pascale Casanova has argued that The World Republic of Letters is defined by inequality, conflict, and competition, where resources are distributed unevenly among the national literary spaces and where some—mostly the older, (formerly) imperial—tend to dominate others—the more recent, the smaller and the formerly colonized nations. This rivalry takes place at several levels simultaneously: on a political, a literary, and a linguistic level that are all connected, but also relatively autonomous.7 Casanova describes the loose connections between the three tiers as follows: “Since language is not a purely literary tool, but an inescapably political instrument as well, it is through language that the literary world remains subject to political power” (115). Of course, it is notably within the formerly colonized literary spaces, such as francophone Africa, that political domination has been typically wielded via the “soft” power of language. As will be demonstrated, francophone sub-Saharan writers—particularly those that aspire to become “international” authors—remain to a large extent dependent for their recognition on the literary establishment in Paris, long considered “the capital of the literary world” (Casanova 127), that until recently took little or no interest in writers from its former colonies. However, Casanova’s comprehensive literary theory with its Euro-American points of reference—Paris, London, and New York as powerful urban centers of literary taste—disregards any “relations among different margins” (Lionnet and Shih 2), “minor-to-minor networks that circumvent the major altogether” (Lionnet and Shih 8)8 or “counter-forces” (Moretti, Distant Reading 105). Besides a description of the large-scale, global tendencies, the current study also highlights the examples of these “minor” articulations that affect the literary consecration of the major ones, such as, for instance, the role played by the Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique noire as a precursor for the leading Franco-French literary prizes. Several “minor transnationalisms” will also be discussed in the presentation of Batouala’s transnational reception in the 1920s and 1930s. Yet written in a Europhone language, francophone African literature played not quite the same role on the world literary stage as did for instance

8

Introduction

“small” (Casanova 183) or “less powerful” (Moretti, Distant Reading 104) European literatures, such as, for instance, the Romanian or Lithuanian. In this respect, the core-periphery systemic model, pursued by Johan Heilbron to describe the functioning of the “world system” of translations, is relevant. Borrowing terminology from Immanuel Wallerstein and Abram de Swaan, Heilbron establishes a translation hierarchy of super-central (English as the dominant lingua franca), central (such as French and German), and the numerous (semi-)peripheral languages (432). The more central the position of a language in the world system of translations, the larger its share in translated books. Hence, francophone African literature occupies a unique position: albeit written in one of the central languages, it remains the former colonizer’s idiom emanating from the fringes. In an increasingly globalized culture industry and the persisting asymmetry in power relations in a postcolonial context, scholars have since the turn of the millennium redirected their focus gradually from the literary text as discursive and symbolic entity to book production and the text as (commercial) object.9 Their materialist critique of (world/postcolonial) literature—associated with Marxist cultural theory—includes questions on the ethics of publishing, particularly of postcolonial texts: how can diversity be vouchsafed within the large transnational profit-driven publishing conglomerates? Or, if selected for exploitation, how does one avoid the potential conflict between the literary work as a cultural value/artifact and the commodification and exoticization of marginality? In this context, the literary prize—that functions as a “legitimizing machinery”—seems one of the most effective instruments for marketing the “exotic” and accumulating cultural as well economic capital, as argued by Huggan with respect to the Booker Prize (Huggan, “Prizing ‘otherness’”).10 As mentioned above, in the 1920s, Batouala’s presentation as an authentic (“exotic”) African novel and the subsequent consecration by the Goncourt prize galvanized a swell of (international) attention. However, as will be shown, it was not until the early 2000s that francophone sub-Saharan fiction became systematically consecrated by prestigious Franco-French prizes, thus paving the way for translation, “the foremost example of a particular type of consecration in the literary world” (Casanova 133), as well as additional translation prizes within the anglophone literary field. TRANSLATIONAL TURNS AND THE POSTCOLONIAL CONTEXT In the current study, the analysis of the position of francophone sub-Saharan narratives within the French literary landscape merely lays out the first phase leading to its ultimate goal: the investigation of those texts that reach the

Introduction

9

Anglo-American book market. Transnational circulation of literary texts outside their original production context typically involves translation. However, rather than focusing on the linguistic implications of translations—that have dominated translation studies for 2,000 years—this study takes a cultural/ sociological approach to literary translation that led to a paradigm shift in the late 1980s. Abandoning the linguistically oriented and text-bound translation theory focusing on the concept of equivalence—be it on the level of the word, translation unit, or function—the term “cultural turn,” first coined by Bassnett and Lefevere in their 1990 volume Translation History and Culture, introduced a shift in translation studies toward the exploration of issues of power and manipulation. Bassnett and Lefevere described this “turn” as follows: “Translations are never produced in an airlock where they, and their originals, can be checked against the tertium comparationis in the purest possible lexical chamber, untainted by power, time, or even the vagaries of culture. Rather, translations are made to respond to the demands of a culture, and of various groups within that culture” (7). The shift from the study of literary translation norms to the extra-literary forces that drive the demand for translations focuses on the power wielded by the institutional agents in a position to form and manipulate cultural representation. Agents themselves are embedded in a culture and influenced by ideological as well as economic dynamics operating within a cultural field. In their volume on the sociology of translation, Michaela Wolf and Alexandra Fukari construe the cultural and social formation that condition the process of translation on two planes: “The first level, a structural one, encompasses influential factors such as power, dominance, national interests, religion, or economics. The second level concerns the agents involved in the translation process, who continuously internalize the aforementioned structures and act in correspondence with their culturally connotated value systems and ideologies” (4). Wolf and Fukari’s intention is to avoid dichotomization and deterministic views of these two approaches by emphasizing the interconnectedness between the cultural and the social. Society cannot be described without references to culture, nor culture without references to society. Following Wolf and Fukari’s lead, the present book explores the agents and agencies that enable and condition translations, without, however, disregarding the influential elements that inform the value systems in which they operate. In recent years, it has been particularly the ideological position of one of the agents, the translator, that has been foregrounded in translation studies.11 Not only considered a cultural mediator, their role as activist has been highlighted, notably when engaged with the representation of marginalized, voiceless and discriminated communities. Hence, in 2012 yet another turn is introduced in translation studies: after the cultural and the sociological, Wolf presents the “activist turn” (“The Sociology of translation and its ‘activist turn’”). Albeit interpreted in a broad

10

Introduction

array of meanings, the term activist is invariably connected to discrepancies in status and power within the translatorial context. In fact, Gentzler and Tymoczko consider power “the key topic that has provided the impetus for the new directions that translation studies have taken since the cultural turn” (xvi). Harking back to Foucault’s notion of the production of knowledge, power constitutes an essential theme within the subfields of translation studies and postcolonial translation theory that followed the rise of postcolonial studies as a discipline in the 1980s. Researching translation in a postcolonial context, Tymoczko developed the notion of the translation as metonymic rewriting.12 Translators not only hold authority on a textual level to adapt, amplify, select, privilege, and subvert an original myth, but they also produce a “rewriting of a classical myth [that] stands metonymically for a larger mythic corpus of which the single story is part” (Translation in a Postcolonial Context 44). In addition to creating images of a foreign literature and its writing—contingently participating in the construction of a literary canon from the outside—a translation re-presents the foreign culture and society, thus acquiring a metonymic function. This ethnocentric tendency within the culture production (texts) operates on the level of the selection of format (genre/text type) and content (ideology) that fits snugly into the target culture (Lefevere, “Composing the Other” 120). Such impulses are likely to be enhanced in regard to translations by hegemonic cultures of non-canonical or marginal literature, including, of course, rewritings of francophone sub-Saharan texts in English. Thus, Venuti contends that during the 1970s the theme of the anti-colonial struggle—to which a certain readership in the West was particularly partial—prevailed in African literature published by Heinemann in the African Writers Series. An issue worth exploring is, therefore, the extent to which translated francophone literature has conformed to this image. An additional element to consider is that these translations have mostly taken shape, and continue to be predominantly produced, by nonnatives living in the West where their publishing firms are generally located. Europhone African translators were simply not available “at a time when fluent European-language bilingualism was rare among Africans as a result of distinct and mutually exclusive colonial practices” (Bandia, Translation as Reparation 160). In fact, both during the colonial era—when relations existed first and foremost between the colonizing nation and its colonies—but also post-independence, exchanges between francophone and anglophone regions in Africa, at least regarding literary issues, were limited. For instance, asked in 1980 whether So Long a Letter would do well in English or in French elsewhere in Africa, Mariama Bâ revealed that having read only two books translated from English to French she discovered “to [her] great surprise,” “the same traditions, the same problems, the same way of doing things, the

Introduction

11

same reticence” in anglophone Africa as in francophone Africa (Harrell-Bond 213; emphasis added).13 The “domesticating” tendency—that is, the inclination to adjust the rewriting to the target language and culture (Venuti, The Scandals of Translation 67)—will likely be stronger as the translator deals with source texts that are further removed in space and time from the target texts, and that therefore call for re-interpretation and re-contextualization of a work whose meaning might otherwise remain obscure for the contemporary Western reader. In the case of sub-Saharan literary works, the distance between source and target text— from the metropolitan perspective—is culturally wider and the challenges for the translator are even more abundant than in the case of translations of texts originating from a Western culture and targeting a reading catchment within a similar culture. The foreign, marginal culture is frequently, if not invariably, reshaped to fit the image that the Western metropolis propagates successfully on its book market. This tendency is epitomized in a first instance by the editor (by way of the paratext) and the translator (via the rewriting). André Lefevere dubbed this ethnocentric (eurocentric) approach “acculturation” (Translating Literature 12),14 whereas Lawrence Venuti refers to the translational inscription of linguistic and cultural values of the target context as “domestication.” This process occurs at every level of the production of the translated literary text, Venuti claims: its selection, the making of the translation, its presentation, and marketing. In a postcolonial context, a power asymmetry between the colonized and (neo)colonizer, and/or the involvement of subordinate as well as dominant constituencies, add an important dimension to the representation of the Other.15 In a more nuanced statement, Venuti describes the formation as cultural identities via translation as follows: “Within the hegemonic countries, translation fashions images of their subordinate others that can vary between the poles of narcissism and self-criticism, confirming or interrogating dominant domestic values, reinforcing or revising the ethnic stereotypes, literary canons, trade patterns, and foreign policies to which another culture may be subject” (The Scandals of Translation 159).16 A case in point is the enlargement of a stereotypical African theme, in vogue around the millennium turn, of the child soldier in war-torn post-independence Africa. Both as a protagonist of (francophone as well as anglophone) novels and as the main character on screen, this “exotic” figure appealed to a Western constituency. Although a translation may defy prevailing representations of and attitudes to the source culture, it aims more often at assimilating the foreign culture in a text that is recognizable to the reader of the translation, a target text that, on a purely linguistic level, reads “smoothly” and is not readily identifiable as a translation. Aiming at resisting, even subverting “ethnocentrism,” Venuti advocates the translation strategy conforming to the source text that

12

Introduction

he designates, echoing Schleiermacher, as “foreignization” (The Translator’s Invisibility 20).17 In other words, Venuti staunchly defends making the foreign and the translatedness of the translation visible, particularly as a practice of resistance against dominant languages and cultures, such as the anglophone.18 In my analysis, rather than focusing on translation strategies chosen by the translators—whether tending toward a foreignizing, as advocated by Venuti, or domesticating approach—what will be addressed are the selection of texts by individual agents involved in the book production, as well as the material presentation to the various reading constituencies. To what extent do their selection and re-presentation reflect domesticating/ foreignizing tendencies and/or adjustment to Western reading practices across linguistic and cultural boundaries? It remains equally significant for the representation of a foreign literature and culture, whenever possible and relevant, to signal omissions and “delayed” translations—where the time lag between the original publication and its translation is protracted—since these inform us of foreign literary production that is not represented in the target culture, and thus by omission contributes to the formation of a cultural identity. Gentzler comments that an analogous approach is recommended by Spivak in her famous essay “Can the Subaltern Speak?” A Western scholar who per definition has only partial access to the subaltern’s condition should measure and read “the gaps, the silences, and the contradictions” of what is said (Gentzler 207). Furthermore, in order to be as transparent as possible regarding her position with respect to the subaltern voice, Spivak, for instance, contextualizes her translation of the collection of stories by Mahasweta Devi, Imaginary Maps (1995) by means of a translator’s preface, an interview with the author and an afterword. “The interview not only allows the author to speak but also positions the translator as involved in the mediation to follow. Marking one’s position as a translator, as a mediating subject, is an important part of postcolonial translation” (Gentzler 209). In addition to functioning as an articulation of the position of the (Western) translator rendering a postcolonial text, prefatory material, in general, serves as contextualization for a literary work. Gentzler’s remark regarding the presentation of Spivak’s book acknowledges the potentially framing gesture performed by the paratextual representation of a literary work. The paratext as the material liminal space is ultimately fashioned by the publisher (and potentially includes contributions by the author, the translator and/or a representative of the literary or political establishment) and presents the material book with its title, cover, epigraphs, dedication, prefaces, etc. to the readers. In a new linguistic and cultural environment, the recontextualizing not only re-orients the reception of the translation but also preempts its interpretation and/or constricts its signifying potential. Primarily, an introduction functions as a guide for the reader, or, to speak with Lefevere,

Introduction

13

“a conceptual grid” (“Composing the Other” 76), that we encounter most frequently when Western cultures translate non-Western cultures.19 Readers are also familiar with the practice, particularly by anglophone publishers, of including critics’ laudatory blurbs on book covers. As such, the analysis of the interventionist paratext cannot be ignored in a study of the circulation of literary translations within a global book industry. To follow Damrosch’s lead, “works of world literature take on a new life as they move into the world at large, and to understand this new life we need to look closely at the ways the work becomes reframed in its translations and in its new cultural contexts” (24; emphasis added). Once a literary work has crossed its original linguistic boundary, particularly into the anglophone literary space, its accrued visibility may not only lead to afterlives, to speak with Walter Benjamin, but also to its (temporary) inclusion in world literature, particularly if it is written “in the Esperanto of international literary fiction” (Shatz) that appeals to a global readership. Lepape foregrounds the importance of the text’s availability in English as a sine qua non for its success in the global marketplace: “This inclusion [in world literature] is [. . .] independent of any literary or aesthetic criteria. It simply reflects the capacity of an author—sometimes of a single book—to be commercially successful in the most profitable linguistic regions, if not the most important ones. To begin with, in the Anglophone regions, a prerequisite for any commercial considerations on a global scale” (25; emphasis added).20 Damrosch specifies that “a work only has an effective life as world literature whenever, and wherever, it is actively present within a literary system beyond that of its original culture” (4; emphasis added). In other words, a text must be available for reading and circulate outside its source culture in order to be included in “world” literature during a specific time period. But even if a text fails to be elevated to the venerated rank of “world fiction,” its availability on the market—in print or electronic form—to potential readers remains a prerequisite for its “effective life.” The continued production of a sub-Saharan francophone novel indicates a demand (even if only by educational institutions) and most likely points toward a canonical status of the text. To speak with Moretti, “books survive when they are read and disappear when they aren’t” (Graphs 20). At the end of this section it is worth dwelling for a moment on the common denominator of the cultural and translational theories engaged in and adumbrated above. If this study focuses on the external forces that shaped the contours of sub-Saharan African literary production as it reached the Anglo-American marketplace, it by no means intends to slight the relevance of the interaction between these external forces with internal influences in the form of authorial agency.21 In Remapping African Literature, Olabode Ibironke aims to demonstrate the connection between these two forces, in

14

Introduction

view of “repositioning the center of production of African literature and its archives” (11). Quoting John Spiers, he clarifies: “The internal forces correspond to preferences and external forces represent opportunities and constraints.” Inventing the term “auto-heteronomy,” Ibironke goes on to illustrate the intersection of the African author’s creativity and the enabling imperial publishing structure, Heinemann Educational Books and its African Writers Series.22 As will be shown, this series also opened important avenues for francophone African writers, particularly during the 1960s to 1980s, the “second scramble for Africa.” In what follows, I argue that the external forces of literary production perform gestures of selection and re-presentation/ appropriation, processes to which not only francophone sub-Saharan literature in English translation has been and remains subjected. It is, of course, a truism to state that this constitutes a mechanism that to various degrees and in various guises affects any transfer of literature, art, or knowledge that travels between linguistic and/or cultural spaces. And although in a postcolonial context, argued Said in Orientalism, the iniquitous power relationship between the dominating (the West, the center) and the dominated (be it the “Orient” or Africa, that is, the margins)23 enhances these gestures, these tendencies have been blurred in our neoliberal age by the influence of transnational corporations and the internet. In a related vein, V.Y. Mudimbe in The Invention of Africa searches for the “foundations of discourse about Africa,” (emphasis added) and poses questions regarding “knowledge and power in and on Africa” (xi). In particular, Mudimbe investigates along with other scholars how to develop an anthropological science without ethnocentrism. In the following account, I endeavor to explore how the processes of selection, perception, and re-presentation, not unrelated to ethnocentrism, evolved with respect to relevant elements of a carefully defined corpus of francophone sub-Saharan narratives translated into English, over the course of almost a century. What forces remodeled this literary “fringe” as it traveled transnationally, or, in other words, what was the nature of the “fermenting” process to which it was subjected? Ferment of the fringes examines this “agitation” or “excitement”—synonyms of “ferment” provided by the Oxford Dictionary.24 THE CREATION OF A CORPUS OF NARRATIVES For the initial formation of our corpus narratives I am indebted to Kathryn Batchelor’s book Decolonizing Translation. African Novels in English Translation (2009), a study of language and linguistic choices by literary translators confronted with an African reality expressed in the tongue of the (former) colonizer. Batchelor’s research is based on a list of seventy-three francophone sub-Saharan novels, published and translated into English

Introduction

15

between the early 1950s and 2008. After some minor corrections and a slight adjustment to the definition of the francophone sub-Saharan text, this list was supplemented with translated narratives published since 1921 and up to and including 2017. These entries were cross-listed against bibliographies on creative African literature, as well as the bibliography by Janheinz Jahn and Claus Peter Dressler (until 1971) and the LITAF database of francophone African literature, set up by Virginie Coulon.25 The resulting titles were then checked against the international libraries database WorldCat to list the works translated into English. Since the latter remains imperfect, three additional inventories of French-English translated literary works were consulted: the translation base accessible at the Publishers Weekly website (moved in 2018 from the “Three Percent” website of the University of Rochester, created in 2008), and information provided by the French Publishers Agency26 as well as the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in Washington.27 The analysis of this data led to the creation of a total corpus of 118 francophone subSaharan works published and translated into English between 1921 and 2017. A definition of the parameters that set the boundaries of this corpus is of-course a prerequisite for its analysis.28 Labels such as “African,” “subSaharan,” and “francophone” have often been rejected by authors who see themselves first and foremost as writers or creators, and only secondarily as African, if at all (Schifano 17). Although epithets denoting region or choice of language are widely used to categorize artists, this type of labeling is frequently deemed constraining and ghettoizing by authors in general, including Africans writing in French, whose literary production is still to a large extent defined by and dependent on the former colonizers’ literary establishment.29 Yet despite reservations also frequently expressed by “africanist” researchers, the use of some topographic identifiers seems inevitable for pragmatic reasons.30 For instance, Jean-Marie Volet rightly asserts in his introduction to Les Paroles aux Africaines that any classification remains to a certain extent arbitrary: does “African” refer to the skin color, one’s birth place or origin?” (22)31 In a first instance, for the current study, a boundary definition has been adopted in geographical terms: included are works by (diasporic) writers originating from or possessing ties to West or Central African countries—as well as Djibouti situated in East Africa—where French is one of the official languages and/or a significant francophone population resides.32 Excluded are on the one hand writers with ties to the North African countries, the socalled Maghreb—Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria—and, on the other hand, the islands in the Indian Ocean: Madagascar, Mauritius, and Réunion, generally precluded from the rest of francophone sub-Saharan literary Africa due to their specific political history and linguistic particularities.33 Of course, we must remain cognizant of the fact that the epithets “African” and “subSaharan” appear monolithic and include a great variety of nations, ethnicities,

16

Introduction

cultures, religions, and sites on the African continent. On the other hand, geographical denominations such as “Cameroonian novel” or “Senegalese literature”—besides referring to constructed postcolonial nations—are rarely foregrounded in the Western book market where our translated corpus narratives eventually emerge, and where these works are presented to a readership that often lacks detailed geographical knowledge of the African continent. Furthermore, though transnational mobility is not uncommon among European writers, their African counterparts frequently possess a binational status.34 With their hyphenated identities—“franco-something” (“francomachin”) is the term used by Ken Bugul in an interview with Mbaye Diouf; 123—these migrant authors often straddle several continents in their life, leaving their native country for the Western metropolis, a primary site for the visibility and the recognition of literary talent. Rather than fixing and essentializing the identity of authors, we should acknowledge the plurality of geographical and sociocultural influences at different stages in their diasporic itinerary reflected by their literary production.35 One of the many African writers who settled in France, the Cameroonian-born Léonora Miano, refusing a constrictive identity, refers to herself as “afropéen”: “Afropéa” designates a mental space where two cultures, two traditions, two remembrances merge while acknowledging belonging to a diverse Europe. Exploring in her writing the lives of the Black diaspora living in France, but taking issue with the confinement to the epithet denoting a nation-state, Miano interprets “afropéen” as a label that faces the future with optimism and confidence (83–86).36 The following example illustrates how boundary parameters can result in the inclusion in this study of a text by one author but the dismissal of another work by the same writer. Myriam Warner-Vieyra, born in Guadeloupe, spent a decade in Paris before settling at age twenty-two in Senegal with her husband Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, originally from Dahomey (current Benin). In an interview with Mildred Mortimer, Warner-Vieyra explains: “I am me that’s all! I am not one hundred per cent Caribbean because I left Guadeloupe at the age of twelve. I am not African because I arrived here at the age of twentytwo. I’m not French. I’m all of the above” (Mortimer 114). Warner-Vieyra published two novels in the 1980s that were translated into English. The first one, Le quimboiseur l’avait dit (Présence Africaine 1980, published as As the Sorcerer Said by Longman, Essex, UK, in 1982), situated both in Guadeloupe and Paris, is routinely perceived and classified as representative of Caribbean literature. Her second novel, Juletane (Présence Africaine, 1980), although published by Heinemann in 1986 in the Caribbean Writers Series, is primarily set in Senegal. In the introduction to the 2014 English edition, the translator Betty Wilson highlights Warner-Vieyra’s hybrid identity: “In a sense [the novel] might be considered by some to be an ‘African’ novel.

Introduction

17

Warner-Vieyra’s writing is said to belong to both Caribbean and African literature. She is considered a Caribbean writer as well as being included among voices from Senegal” (viii). Wilson brings into focus the combination of the novel’s predominantly African setting and themes, such as polygamy, as well as the author’s essentially West Indian sensibility. In view of its dominating African (epitextual) framework as well as subject matter Warner-Vieyra’s second novel has been included in this study.37 In a similar vein, Simon Njami’s novel Cerceuil & Cie (Paris, Lieu Commun 1985, published as Coffin & Co by Black Lizard, Berkeley CA two years later) calls for further explanation regarding its “Africanness.” Born from Cameroonian parents in Switzerland and living in France, Njami set this novel primarily in Paris (“Paris: ‘Black Label’” as indicated on the cover), although the first chapter opens in Harlem introducing two black police officers who soon travel to the French capital. As from the second chapter, the novel focuses increasingly on the Cameroonian-born journalist Amos Yegba living in Paris who starts an investigation into the death of a Senegalese man. However, the awakening of the primary narrator Yegba to his conflicted (racial) identity does not qualify as the only factor that could justify the novel’s epithet “African.” It is also presented tentatively on the French cover as “le premier [roman] d’une Black Generation en France?” (the first novel by a Black Generation in France?)—extending the novel’s scope to racial questions in general.38 Arguably the most famous and controversial case apropos of African identity “entrapment” involves the award-winning novelist and playwright Marie NDiaye, born in Pithiviers, France, of a white French mother and a black Senegalese father. Considered “one of the strongest literary voices to have emerged in the 1980s” (Moudileno, “Fame, celebrity” 9) NDiaye explicitly disavowed the tag “African/francophone novelist,” for instance, in an interview with Beverley Ormerod and Jean-Marie Volet: Having never lived in Africa and hardly known my father (I am métisse), I cannot be considered a francophone novelist, that is a French-speaking foreigner; no African culture was passed down to me. I know little of it, as would the sort of person who is interested in all forms of culture. I thought it was important to make this point as I did not know if you also wished to study novelists who are as superficially African as I am. (Ormerod and Volet 111)39

Ironically, NDiaye became the “‘star’ of the 2009 ‘rentrée littéraire’” (Moudileno, “Fame, celebrity” 69) when she was awarded the Goncourt prize for Trois Femmes puissantes (Three Strong Women, 2012), considered the least “French” of the books she had written hitherto. Nevertheless, neither the publisher Gallimard nor, broadly speaking, the critics advocated

18

Introduction

the award-winning text as an “African” novel. Instead, they emphasized the humanity and the dignity of the three eponymous women who happen to be African.40 Since in this study the final decisive factor for inclusion in the corpus of francophone sub-Saharan African texts is the reader’s perception of the work as “African” or “sub-Saharan” NDiaye’s award-winning novel was not incorporated. As a rule, the first reader to determine this is the editor, or to speak with Cadioli, the “hyperlecteur” (138) (“super reader”), who, acting in name of, or catering to a community of readers, foregrounds in the paratext certain elements pertaining to the book while, wittingly or not, obfuscating others. The crucial role played by the (series) editor or publisher in the presentation of the narrative to the readership via the paratext will be explored in depth at a later stage. Similar to the editor, reviewers or critics—both of journalistic and scholarly articles—occupy a privileged and powerful position as they present the literary work to a broader public and “enlighten” a potential readership (Genette, Figures V 8). Described by Bourdieu as sustaining “objective complicity” (“connivence objective”) (“La production” 21), the relationship between the journalistic (more so than the scholarly) critic and the reader of a newspaper or journal will be one of ideological homology: the readers will more often than not embrace the ideological position represented by the news outlet they consult and consequently readily accept the critics’ judgment. Thus, these privileged “hyperlecteurs” represent the “average” reader by selecting, framing, and evaluating the literary work. First voiced in the press, the critics’ favorable opinions are then often repeated in blurbs—packaged as publishing shibboleths—on the book covers to entice the potential reader or buyer. For instance, the cover of Ahmadou Kourouma’s award-winning novel Allah Is Not Obliged—published by Anchor Books, Random House in 2007—featured the blurb “‘Shocking and deeply moving . . . ‘An African Lord of the Flies’.—The Guardian.” In a few words, the critic writing for a reputable British newspaper frames the text for the Western reader: this is an African novel that explores a familiar subject, reminiscent of the classic Lord of the Flies. Thus, the critic concomitantly particularizes (exoticizes) as well as generalizes the novel’s theme, the apposite, proven formula for a “goodseller,” if not bestseller.41 In conclusion of this section, the perception and subsequent representation by the privileged readers—publishers, editors, and critics, representing their readership—will weigh heavily in the decision to label a text as “African,” thus justifying its inclusion in the corpus. With respect to the formation of our corpus, the case of the bilingual writer—the author who publishes the same work both in French and in English—needs to be addressed as it relates to the definition of translation. Claire Ducournau analyzes the situation of Albert Russo who, born in Zaïre of Belgian parents with Anglo-Italian roots, lived in several African

Introduction

19

countries, before studying in the United States and Germany. Ducournau includes him in her corpus of African writers since he wittingly incorporates numerous African references in his fiction (Ecrire 319).42 Yet, with regard to our corpus criteria, the additional aspect of the translation needs to be considered: since Russo himself was the translator of his works, the element of rewriting remodels the translation. In spite of the fact that all translations are rewritings to a certain extent, we must acknowledge that in the case of fusion (conflation) of author and translator, the creative freedom involved in the “second” version, the translation, remains unrestrained by the usual “ethics” of translation, as referred to by Venuti in his introduction to The Scandals of Translation (6).43 This auctorial freedom—that is, license to transliterate the original text in translation—can also be illustrated by a statement made by the Mauritian writer of Indian descent, Ananda Devi, who self-translated her novel Pagli from French into English.44 In an interview with Julia Waters, she concedes, “it’s more of a rewriting than a translation” (Devi and Waters 122). The final parameter setting the corpus boundaries that needs scrutiny is the genre. At the inception of African literature in French, poetry was the preferred genre of the Negritude writers publishing in the 1930s and 1940s.45 In Les Ecrivains noirs de la langue française: naissance d’une littérature, Lilyan Kesteloot remarks on “the dazzling superiority” (308) (“la supériorité éclatante”) of black poetry over the novel until 1947.46 Since then, she argues, black writers have been turning to the novel, a genre that lends itself better to the explanation of ideas, according to these writers. It is only in the mid1980s that the novel catches up with poetry, thus becoming the dominant genre in African literature (Ducournau, Ecrire 95–97). Kesteloot also brings into focus the high percentage of autobiographies and works inspired by personal experience that we see partially reflected in our corpus of translated works (309). Although the majority of the works in our corpus correspond to the definition of novel—in itself a protean genre—a more comprehensive designation comprising memoirs, autobiographies, and chronicles alike would be covered by the term narrative in the following definition of the Oxford English Dictionary: In structuralist and post-structuralist theory: a representation of a history, biography, process, etc., in which a sequence of events has been constructed into a story in accordance with a particular ideology; [. . .] a story or representation used to give an explanatory or justificatory account of a society, period, etc.

In the corpus under consideration, this definition includes any story or fictional (largely subjective) account of events and experiences, incorporating texts presented by a number of different categories: memoirs and autobiographies—a subtitle adopted for L’Enfant noir (1953) (The Black/The African Child)

20

Introduction

by Camara Laye; “chronicles” (“chroniques”), of which Un Nègre à Paris (1959)(An African in Paris) by Bernard Dadié is an illustration; and a “songnovel” (“chant-roman”) such as Werewere Liking’s La Mémoire amputée (2004) (The Amputated Memory).47 The term “narrative,” albeit not strictly speaking a genre, is less tainted by ideology than “novel,” that, although no longer a parochially Western genre, was imported into African culture via the colonizers’ languages, cultures, and their education system.48 Hence, Henry Chakava, managing director of Heinemann Kenya Ltd., viewed Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Mitagari as a text suited to bridge the gap between what he scathingly qualified as the “pseudo-European novel in Africa and the real traditional African narrative” (240; emphasis added).49 Mitagari, first written in Gikuyu before being translated into English, was modeled on a folkloric tale, mixing oral tradition as well as poetry. The question is whether more typically indigenous African genres would have been as popular and thus as marketable in translation in a first or second European language as the familiar, dominant genre of the novel. In this context, the influential role of the publisher needs again to be considered. Commercial arguments largely prevail in the decision by editors to emphasize the literary genre in the paratext or even to modify the genre mentioned on the cover of the translation with respect to the original publication. The French edition of The Dark Child/The African Child is subtitled “roman” (novel) on the inside front cover—though this somewhat erroneous genre specification disappears in later editions—whereas the American edition reads conspicuously as added subtitle on the cover “The Autobiography of an African boy.” Commenting on the porous boundary between autobiography and novel, Batchelor provides several examples of the modification in genre categorization regarding francophone novels marketed to an anglophone readership: The Abandoned Baobab. The Autobiography of a Senegalese Woman by Ken Bugul transitions from novel to autobiography in the English edition, whereas, for instance, the novelistic aspects of Werewere Liking’s The Amputated Memory are more foregrounded in the English edition than in the French version labeled as “chant-roman” (songnovel). These examples not only demonstrate the genre-blending emblematic of indigenous African literature but also corroborate the germane choice of the term African narrative selected as a broad boundary description of the corpus under consideration. Finally, by approaching our corpus delineation from another perspective, one could construe it as the exclusion of a number of genres, such as volumes of poetry, drama, works written for a juvenile audience and short stories. Concerning the latter, all narratives initially published individually in a book volume are incorporated, even if their total page number is low.50 For instance, the first novel by a woman from sub-Saharan francophone Africa,

Introduction

21

Essential Encounters by Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury, contains fifty-five pages of text (an additional eighteen-page introduction is included), yet apparently deemed relevant enough to be published in a single volume. As stated above, the written narrative is the dominant literary genre most likely to lead to a (translated) international bestseller status and/or to be incorporated in the international canon of world literature. CHAPTER OUTLINES The five chapters of this study have been organized as follows: the first two introduce a wide-angled overview of our corpus narratives in the relevant French and anglophone literary spaces; chapters 3 and 4 highlight two pertinent subgroups of narratives—broadly speaking, the award-winning texts and those authored by early female African writers; the last chapter focuses on the in-depth study of one specific text, Batouala, coincidentally the first of the corpus to be published. Chapter 1 of this study provides a detailed description and analysis of the position of our corpus of 118 francophone sub-Saharan narratives within the French as well as the global literary publishing space. Relevant developments regarding the publishing landscape of the corpus are visualized in bar and pie charts. Questions this analysis addresses include: What are the specific initial hurdles that these narratives had to overcome in order to attain the visibility and recognition to become eventually incorporated in transnational literature? What editorial, socioeconomic, and political circumstances have been conducive to their dissemination across linguistic borders over time? To what extent does the development of our corpus reflect national and international trends? Although the answers to some of these questions confirm frequently asserted “conjectures,” to speak with Frank Moretti, this data-backed research also leads to more nuanced observations regarding, for example, the evolving role over time of the different categories of publishers in the production of our corpus. Chapter 2 highlights the function of the Anglo-American presses of the translated corpus narratives in order to expose the preponderance over time of various categories of publishers—be it commercial, ideological or educational—and their respective mission. The essential role of university presses—that publish mostly contemporary francophone texts but also longstanding classics that remain available—is analyzed closely, including by way of information gathered via correspondence with (former) series editors. As will be shown, in academia it is precisely the canonical value of the corpus narratives in English translation that is often conflated with or even eclipsed by their relevance as social or anthropological documents. In this context, a

22

Introduction

two-pronged approach illustrates how the selective appropriation of African texts by the foreign (Anglo-American) reception context operates. First, analysis of the dominant themes presented in the corpus narratives will disclose possible Western biases regarding the selection of texts for translation, potentially presenting a reductive image of the foreign culture. Second, this chapter investigates the more compelling interpretative significance taken on by the paratextual framework of the translation compared to the original edition, since this “threshold” is generally exploited to a greater extent by Anglo-American publishers. The scope of the study is widened in chapter 3 via the prism of consecration in the form of literary and translation awards/grants in a twofold manner: by addressing, on the one hand, the representation of women authors—a minority category in itself—and, on the other hand, via the focus on minority (“ethnic”) writers more broadly. How has the institutional recognition of literary production and translation by these minorities evolved over time? Literary awards confer visibility and legitimation on a text in the form of symbolic as well as economic capital. Several categories of literary prizes— prestigious and less eminent Franco-French as well as African and francophone awards—bestowed on the corpus narratives are charted over time. What function do these different prizes fulfill in the transnational trajectory of the narratives, or to what extent do some act as a precursor to more illustrious marks of homage? Once an afterlife is granted in the form of an English translation, further recognition of the text may be granted by translation awards or foreign fiction prizes within the new literary field, thus leading to an accumulation of symbolic, journalistic, and economic capital by certain literary texts (and their authors). Chapter 4 foregrounds the women writers represented in the corpus— responsible for a mere 23 percent of the texts—and, more specifically, their pioneers. The first generation of African female authors included in our corpus—such as Aminata Sow Fall, Mariama Bâ, Ken Bugul, and Nafissatou Diallo—were predominantly published by Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines in Dakar, addressing a primarily local African readership. The original African francophone paratext of these texts will be examined more closely and compared with their subsequent anglophone packaging. The second part of this chapter is dedicated to the potential explanations for the lack of interest by Anglo-American publishers for certain African female writers, keeping in mind, of course, this question can be posed apropos of any meritorious literary work that has not been translated. Lastly, analysis of the feminine corpus narratives points to the influential role of literary translators as cultural mediators. Personal correspondence with some high-profile translators of African feminine narratives and archival research reveal that some of these

Introduction

23

translators view their work as a “political act” that amplifies internationally unheard (female) voices. The final chapter presents a case study of transnational reception and appropriation of the earliest novel of the corpus narratives, René Maran’s Batouala, that provoked not only a full-fledged national scandal but also international reverberations. A short overview of the novel’s editorial (paratextual) and journalistic reception in France, Germany, and the United States is followed by a detailed contrastive analysis of the editorial and journalistic reception of Maran’s text in the Netherlands and its largest colony, the Dutch East Indies (using the Delpher database as a source). This allows us to juxtapose the novel’s reception in two European imperialist nations possessing colonies in the 1920s, that is, France and the Netherlands. To what extent do these press reviews serve the construction of cultural identities and domestic subjectivities for readers both in Netherlands and its most important colony? Most significant, however, is the question of the text’s instrumentalization by yet another nation’s press of Maran’s original message.

NOTES 1. At the same time, the artist typically poised his sculptures in a dialogic relation to their base, their “netherworld” consisting of “assemblages with contrasting elements of stone, wood, and steel” (Chave 14), emphasizing disunity and hybridization inspired by tribal models. In the case of The White Negress II, the head is placed on a cross of black marble, which in turn is supported by a block of white stone atop a wooden structure. 2. Acquired probably directly from the artist in the 1930s by the Polish-American cosmetics entrepreneur Helena Rubinstein, the sculpture has been part of the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago since 1966. http:​//​www​​.arti​​c​.edu​​ /aic/​​colle​​ction​​s​/art​​work/​​24845​​?sear​​ch​_no​​​=1​&in​​dex​=9​. Web. Accessed December 9, 2019. 3. In this study, the term “francophone” is used strictly as an indication of the language in which the texts are written, without the ambiguity often associated with “Francophonie” and its political and/or neocolonial implications. It should be noted that francophone literature is often understood as a separate entity from French (hexagonal) literature. 4. “A true negro novel” is the literal translation of the subtitle of the work that in English translation appeared either without the subtitle in the American 1922 edition and with the subtitle “a negro novel in French” in the 1922 British edition by the publisher Jonathan Cape. All translations are mine, unless otherwise indicated. 5. See chapter 5 for a detailed account of Batouala’s transnational reception.

24

Introduction

6. By applying Bourdieu’s theory of the field of cultural production that provides a useful theoretical framework for my sociological approach to the study of consecration and legitimation of cultural products I mean to suggest a certain agreement with his reflexive sociology of art, albeit acknowledging at the same time its flaws that have been formulated by critics, such as John Frow, John Guillory, and James English (“Winning the Culture Game”). Bourdieu’s economic model of cultural practices also undertheorizes the place of gender and is oddly silent about race (Moi, “Appropriating Bourdieu”). Bourdieu’s term “field” implies interdependence that exists within a defined and structured cultural space where the struggle for domination takes place between agents and institutions. Their goal is “the preservation or transformation of the structure of the established power relationships in the field of production” (The Field of Cultural Production 183). Hence, while “field” is an appropriate term when used in reference to a nation’s literary production—such as the French or American—it would be flawed when applied to African literary production as a whole due to the latter’s internal diversity and lack of autonomy (Mouralis, “Pertinence” 58). The term “space,” less conceptualized than “field,” will, therefore, be adopted when referring to the origin of francophone sub-Saharan literature (see also Meizoz 8 and Ducournau, La Fabrique 21–23). 7. See particularly chapter 3 “World Literary Space” (82–125) and chapter 4 “The Fabric of the Universal” (126–63) in Casanova. 8. For instance, in response to Casanova’s totalizing model, Ruth Bush investigates in her archival research of the production and reception of postwar African francophone literature “the ways in which individuals and communities have also challenged and resisted dominant modes of literary evaluation, working to aims that were not necessarily those of attaining a literary modernity defined at the Greenwich meridian” (20). In a similar vein, Sabo expounds the obsolescence of the coreperiphery theory with respect to the complex process of canonization of the migrant novel where “profane” agents, such as average readers, play an important role in the digital space of websites, blogs and review forums (see chapter 2 “Reception—Online Readers in the Global Literary Marketplace.”) 9. See the following studies (in chronological order) by Graham Huggan (“Prizing ‘otherness’: A short history of the Booker,” 1997 and The Postcolonial Exotic, 2001); Richard Watts (Packaging Post/Coloniality. The Manufacture of Literary Identity in the Francophone World, 2006); Sarah Brouillette (Postcolonial Writers in the Global Literary Marketplace, 2007); Gail Low (Publishing the Postcolonial. Anglophone West African and Caribbean Writing in the UK 1948-1968, 2011); Caroline Davis (Creating Postcolonial Literature. African Writers and British Publishers, 2013), Ruth Bush (Publishing Africa in French. Literary Institutions and Decolonization, 1945-1967, 2016), Claire Ducournau (La Fabrique des classiques africains. Écrivains d’Afrique subsaharienne francophone [1960-2012], 2017), Olabode Ibironke (Remapping African Literature, 2018) and Oana Sabo (The Migrant Canon in the Twenty-first Century in France, 2018). 10. Brouillette contends that this mechanism particularly affects English fiction within an extensive Anglo-American marketplace, and to a lesser degree translated works, with the possible exception of an occasional Nobel Prize winner (59). I would

Introduction

25

argue that no texts of francophone authors included in our corpus—not even Alain Mabanckou’s—have attained the status of “world fiction” (Casanova 171) or “worldreadable” texts (Brouillette 80), in the way that, for instance, Salman Rushdie’s novels have. See Moudileno (“Fame, Celebrity”) regarding the marketing of the francophone postcolonial “margins.” 11. See the special issue of TRR Traduction, terminologie, redaction: Translation and Social Activism XVIII, 2 (2005), as well as Wolf’s article “The Sociology of translation and its ‘activist turn.’” 12. The notion of translation of a literary work as a rewriting, guarantee for its survival, has been stressed by various translation theorists, notably by Bassnett and Lefevere (see “Proust’s Grandmother and the Thousand and One Nights” 10). 13. The paucity of English-language African books translated into French and available in francophone Africa is also confirmed in a letter by Léopold Sédar Senghor to Dorothy Blair. Senghor mentions the unfamiliarity of anglophone Africans with francophone African literature (letter dated August 28, 1985, Dorothy Blair Archives, DBG-15a). Even as recently as in 2013, Véronique Tadjo confirms the existence of this linguistic division in Africa, asserting that “unfortunately, our governments are not really interested in cross-fertilization. They rarely offer incentives for translation projects” (Tadjo 101). With respect to the availability of Frenchlanguage African literature in anglophone Africa, Ruth Bush mentions the Mbari Club, established in Ibadan in 1957, as the first outlet of francophone African writing through its associated journal Black Orpheus. It introduced négritude writers as well as some subsequent novelists, such as Cheikh Hamidou Kane, to anglophone Africa to (Bush, “Publishing Francophone African Literature in Translation” 56–57). 14. Lefevere distinguishes a hierarchy of four levels of translation, ideology being the most important, followed, in descending order, by poetics, universe of discourse, and language. With respect to ideology, Lefevere maintains, “translators are interested in getting their work published. This will be accomplished much more easily if it is not in conflict with standards for acceptable behavior in the target culture: with that culture’s ideology. If the source text clashes with the ideology of the target culture, translators may have to adapt the text so that the offending passages are either severely modified or left out altogether” (Translating Literature 87). 15. See also Tejaswini Niranjana’s volume Siting Translation. History, PostStructuralism, and the Colonial Context. Niranjana advocates, particularly within the colonial context, a strategy of resistance by deconstructing translation in view of the fact that colonized subjects already live “in translation” as re-presented by their colonizers (6). 16. See also the poet and translator of Hebrew and Arabic poetry, Peter Cole, who emphasizes “the backstage dynamic” of translations which shape (in the case of his translated poetry) the Middle East in the American mind: “We should [. . .] note that there is an often invisible, or at any rate hard to detect, political dimension to the consideration of ethics in translations, beginning with the choice of texts to be translated and deciding how a given literature or even a single poet will be represented. Choices of this sort are made every day by both translators and publishers, or editors—sometimes together, sometimes not” (9).

26

Introduction

17. Snell-Hornby suggests that Venuti’s notion of “foreignizing translation,” apart from fitting well in “a context of late twentieth-century translation ethics,” is typical for the perspective of an Anglo-American intellectual who rejects the Englishlanguage hegemony (145–46). A critical appraisal of Venuti’s dualistic concepts of domestication and foreignization and its implications can be found in Gentzler’s essay “Translation, Poststructuralism, and Power.” 18. Naturally we must beware of retreating into dualistic categories: the above descriptions represent extremes on a continuum of potential translation approaches. 19. Although Lefevere identifies this mechanism first and foremost in early Western translations of non-Western cultures, it is my contention that its traces remain discernable in the presentation of contemporary translation of non-Western literature. Lefevere describes his theory of the textual and conceptual grid as follows: “Western cultures ‘translated’ (and ‘translate’) non-Western cultures into Western categories to be able to come to an understanding of them and, therefore, to come to terms with them” (“Composing the Other” 77). 20. “Cette appartenance [à world literature] est [. . .] indépendante de tout critère littéraire ou esthétique. Elle exprime simplement la capacité d’un auteur—parfois d’un seul livre—à s’imposer commercialement dans les aires linguistiques les plus profitables, sinon les plus importantes. A commencer par l’aire linguistique anglais, passage obligé de toute considération commerciale mondialisée.” 21. See also Bush, chapter 4 “Authenticity and authorship” and Brouillette’s study Postcolonial Writers in the Global Literary Marketplace. 22. In his article “Disseminating Africa,” Clive Barnett also highlights the influence of post-independence educational institutions in Africa as agencies of legitimation that shaped postcolonial African writing on the African market (21). 23. Obviously, these categories are neither stable nor clear-cut, but rather heterogeneous and hybrid, as emphasized by Said himself in his afterword to the 1994 edition of Orientalism. 24. The expression “ferment of the fringes” is borrowed from Morrison’s 2007 article “The Death of French Culture.” As the title of my book, it has a more restricted significance than intended by the Time critic, as will be explained. 25. LITAF’s database is annually updated. Since 2011, it has been administered by the UMR (Unité Mixte de Recherches) Les Afriques dans le Monde (LAM), CNRSSciences Po Bordeaux. 26. Lists since 2011 (provided in personal email correspondence May 16, 2014). 27. Lists since 1995 (provided in personal email correspondence June 12, 2014). 28. Defining the parameters of a corpus of texts produced by a certain category of writers constitutes a hazardous undertaking. See for instance Porra’s definition of authors from non-francophone spaces that write in French (“écrivains allophones d’expression française”) in her introduction to Langue française, langue d’adoption (14–16). 29. In her introduction to From Africa. New Francophone Stories, Adele King mentions Abdourahman A. Waberi and Kossi Efoui who both challenge the concept of “African” writing (x). Alain Mabanckou has also frequently vented his fury regarding the positioning of African authors within the French literary establishment. In

Introduction

27

2006, he decries this situation in the following terms : “These authors are thus cloistered, balkanized, cooped up, isolated, irrevocably condemned to carry the burden of an ideology that is incompatible with the artist’s autonomy.” (“La Francophonie”) (“Ces auteurs ainsi cloîtrés, balkanisés, claquemurés, isolés, sont irrémédiablement condamnés à porter le fardeau d’une idéologie incompatible avec l’indépendance de la création”). 30. For instance, Ducournau observes that the grouping together of authors per continent (Africa) or per language (francophonie) “leads to a mere second-rate recognition of these authors” (La Fabrique 252) (“ne produit pour ces auteurs qu’une reconnaissance de second rang”). 31. See also Eloïse Brezault in her introduction to her volume presenting interviews with African authors (11). 32. I have abided by the list of twenty-two countries and regions published by the Haut Conseil de la Francophonie, as presented by Auguste Moussirou-Mouyama in “L’Avenir du français en Afrique subsaharienne.” Included are Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde*, Central African Republic*, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea, GuineaBissau*, Equatorial Guinea*, Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania, Niger*, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe*, Senegal, and Togo. If the countries followed by an asterisk are not represented in the corpus this can be explained to a certain extent by the low percentage of (partial) Francophones among the population. 33. Excluded from the corpus is any colonial literature by French administrators or adventurers, such as Gaston-Joseph or André Demaison who do not originate from the African continent and present the colonizers’ perspective. 34. Wischenbart finds that between 2006 and 2015 “11 among the top 25 European authors have biographies with at least some trans-national [sic] background, and 9 out of 15 who did not write in English, have ventured for some time outside of their native cultural contexts” (Diversity Report 2016 28). Moreover, research by Wischenbart and his colleagues for the Diversity Report 2018 indicates that “one of the main features of bestselling authors [in Western Europe] was that they were fluent in more than one language and spent significant periods of their lives abroad” (34). 35. In her article “From One Place to Another: The Transnational Mobility of Contemporary Sub-Saharan Writers,” Ducournau analyzes the connection between the migratory trajectories of these writers and their literary success, and questions the suitability of identity construction contending: “In recent sub-Saharan African works, insistence on the arbitrary and constructed nature of identities has replaced previous expectations of authenticity” (49). 36. Miano first encountered the term “Afropéa” on an album cover by Zap Mama in the early 1990s (85). 37. It must be noted that an extract from Juletane was also included in Sonia Lee’s anthology of African women writers Les Romancières du Continent noir (Hatier, 1994). 38. The relative subjectivity of the acceptance or rejection of the label “African” with respect to Njami’s novel is illustrated by the divergent judgments on this subject.

28

Introduction

Ducournau includes Njami as an African author in her corpus by virtue of his embrace of his African roots (Ecrire 319; La Fabrique 346). She invokes the argument of the “double appartenance,” a double belonging, that is, to Africa and Paris. Likewise, Odile Cazenave incorporates this “text dealing with racial and cultural issues” (21) in her study Afrique sur Seine: A New Generation of African Writers in Paris. However, Batchelor excludes Njami’s novel on the grounds that the author preferred to distance himself from “the ghetto” of African literature (10). 39. “N’ayant jamais vécu en Afrique, et pratiquement pas connu mon père (je suis métisse), je ne puis être considérée comme une romancière francophone, c’est-à-dire une étrangère de langue française ; aucune culture africaine ne m’a été transmise, je la connais, un peu, comme peuvent la connaître des personnes intéressées par toutes formes de culture. Il me semblait important de le préciser, ne sachant si vous étudiez également des romancières aussi superficiellement africaines que je suis.” 40. See also Ducournau (La Fabrique 362) and Dominic Thomas’s essay “The ‘Marie NDiaye Affair’ or the Coming of a Postcolonial Evoluée” (2010). The latter includes a discussion of responses triggered by the announcement of NDiaye as Goncourt winner. Evidently, the consecration by a leading literary prize augments any existing controversy, as demonstrated by the first corpus novel, Batouala. 41. The appropriate mix of particularism/ “Africanness” and universalism has frequently been advocated by critics as a recipe for a favorable reception by a Western readership (see also Mouralis, Littérature et Développement 136). Chinua Achebe, nonetheless, rejects the praise of the African writer’s universalism as an example of typical colonialist criticism: “It would never occur to them [Western critics] to doubt the universality of their own literature. In the nature of things, the work of a Western writer is automatically informed by universality” (Morning Yet on Creation Day 9, qtd. in Carroll, 2). 42. While Ducournau, in her thesis Ecrire, lire, élire l’Afrique. Les mécanismes de réception et de consécration d’écrivains contemporains originaires de pays francophones d’Afrique subsaharienne (2012) establishes visibility lists of African writers, the current study is based on literary works. Ducournau’s subsequent book La Fabrique des classiques africains. Ecrivains d’Afrique subsaharienne francophone (2017) is largely based on her thesis. I am indebted to both works for valuable information on the consecration of African authors and their writing. 43. Venuti exemplifies the complexity of domestication, authorship and copyright laws with respect to translations by Milan Kundera’s rendering of his novel The Joke. Dissatisfied with the work by two previous translators, Kundera produced a third translation himself. However, in Kundera’s version, more than fifty passages of the original are omitted, references to Czech history are eliminated and characters are altered, prompting Venuti to comment: “Kundera’s preface passed silently over these revisions. In fact, he concluded his version with the misleading notation, ‘completed December 5, 1965,’ as if he had merely translated the unabridged original text. When an author is the translator, apparently, he is not above the domestications that he attacked in the previous English versions” (The Scandals 6).

Introduction

29

44. The French edition of Pagli was published in 2001 in Gallimard’s series Continents noirs while Devi’s 2007 English translation owes its publication to Rupa Publishers, based in Kolkota, India. 45. A noticeable exception is of course the precursor to Negritude poetry: Maran’s controversial 1921 Goncourt winner Batouala, mentioned above. 46. Kesteloot’s study comprises black writers in general, including the Martinican Aimé Césaire and Guyanese Léon Gontran Damas who, together with the Senegalese Léopold Sédar Senghor, established the Negritude movement in the 1930s. 47. See also Volet (21–22) on the difficulty of defining a “romancière africaine.” 48. Christopher Miller explicitly connects the novel as a genre to colonialism: “If the rise of the European novel is tied to the rise of the bourgeoisie, it must also be tied to the rise of colonialism” (Blank Darkness 216). Of course, it has now long been accepted as a “mainstream” genre in African literature as well. 49. Likewise, Véronique Tadjo explains in an interview with Brezault, that while she writes unconventionally—disregarding genre boundaries—her publishers insist on labeling her work: “It seems to me that the ‘novel’ as a label needs to be . . . reassessed. I prefer to speak of ‘text’ or ‘narrative’” (352). (“L’étiquette de ‘roman’ me semble . . . à revoir. Je préfère parler de ‘texte’ ou de ‘récit’”). 50. The definition of “short story” in the Oxford English Dictionary fails to provide a clear-cut indication of its length: “a prose work of fiction, differing from a novel by being shorter and less elaborate; a novelette.” See also Volet (21).

Chapter 1

Francophone African Narratives in a French and Global Publishing Landscape

Our corpus of francophone African narratives and their translations are embedded in a global book industry that has been entirely reshaped since the second half of the twentieth century, particularly as a result of mergers and acquisitions and the steady growth of corporations involved in the book market. These circumstances require some scrutiny with respect to the French and global book market where our narratives circulate. In his insightful volume on the publishing industry in the United States and the United Kingdom, Merchants of Culture, John Thompson comments on “the struggle for visibility” (239–243) of books—and fiction titles in particular—within an exploding book market, especially since the second phase of mergers in the 1980s. Remaining below 50,000 in the United States prior to 1980, the annual number of new titles had risen to around 275,000 in 2008.1 Despite the fierce competition of ebooks and self-publishing, Bowker, the global leader in bibliographic information, reports the production of print books by traditional publishers in the United States for 2013 to amount to 304,912, of which 50,498 meet the criteria for fiction.2 The total of all new translations (including all genres as well as nonfiction) in the United States was projected by a (previous) Bowker report released in October 2005 at 3 percent of which three quarters consisted of nonfiction (Allen, E. 18–19).3 This often quoted proportion of translated books, published both in the United States and in the United Kingdom, has remained more or less stable for decades;4 cultural institutions and scholars pithily refer to this situation as “the 3 percent problem,” by and large lamenting the Anglophones’ parochial reading habits.5 With reference to this low percentage of translated books that are published in the United States, Chad Post created in 2007 the “Three Percent” website, a forum attracting readers, editors and authors involved in international and translated literature. 31

32

Chapter 1

Kaprièlian (2009) cites 1 percent as the rate of French book production out of a total book production in the United States, a percentage that is not far removed from the 0.8 percent declared in 2007 by Anne-Sophie Simenel, Program Director of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York at the time. Simenel estimates at 2.8 percent the total of translated books in the United States—0.2 percent lower than the Bowker report—but adds: “French editorial production is in a good spot” (93),6 assuring that 30 percent of all translations (in the United States) originate from the French.7 However, when compared to the 18 percent of translated books that were published on the French market in 2013, of which 60.2 percent originated from English, the imbalance in literary translation flows between the two linguistic spaces is plainly illustrated.8 This asymmetry in the exchanges between French and English has gradually been exacerbated in recent decades as a result of the growing hegemony of English. In his essay on the circulation of cultural goods outside their production space, Heilbron describes the international system of translation as a hierarchical structure in which English occupies a “hyper-central” position—that is, the language with the highest degree of “extraduction”—translation of English language texts into other languages— followed by French and German (434).9 The more central the cultural production of a given nation, the more it serves as an example for others, and the lower its interest in foreign cultural production. This movement, from the most centralized linguistic spaces to the peripheral, is confirmed by the minimal degree of “intraduction” (the “importation” of foreign texts) in the anglophone literary space, as demonstrated above.10 With respect to the position of francophone sub-Saharan literature, Batchelor estimates the overall percentage of sub-Saharan francophone African novels as a proportion of all translated literature published in the United Kingdom and the United States to linger between 0.5 and 3 percent, based on information provided by the UNESCO-maintained Index Translationum and extrapolations from her corpus of novels (21). Within the global book market, francophone sub-Saharan literature, therefore, occupies a marginal space, the fringes. Yet instead of interpreting the term “marginal” as Eurocentric—a negative value assessment—it should be viewed from an international perspective, in the same sense that Romanian or Dutch literature could be qualified as “marginal” or “small” (Casanova 183), in terms of volume and influence on a global book market, similarly to a literature produced by a peripheral language (Heilbron 434).11 Sub-Saharan French-language literature also faces the following predicament: on the one hand, written in a central Europhone language as part of its colonial legacy, it retains linguistically a privileged position within the global book market where power differentials between Western and nonWestern languages determine the structure of the language systems. On the

Francophone African Narratives

33

other hand, it has been nominally and de facto dissociated from “French” literature and often ghettoized by the French literary establishment as “francophone” or even “foreign” literature. In fact, until the first decade of the millennium, it remained largely an invisible subfield of French literature. Heavily dependent on “the realities of power and authority” (Said 5) of the (former) colonial regime—a point that will be extensively dealt with in this chapter—francophone African literature must be qualified as a literature on the margins of the global literary market, where, as Apter suggests, “global tends to assume a metropolitan circuitry of cultural distribution” (6). What is labeled a subordinate—or fringe—culture with respect to its impact on a global scale, is expressed in the language of the (former) colonizers, a language that is ordinarily not the authors’ first tongue, and, therefore, not an idiom by whose expressions and rhythms they have been imbibed since their early childhood. It has been argued that for many of these authors the very act of writing is translation (Prasad 41),12 a form of transliteration (Ojo 295)13 or the creation of a new hybrid language able to express African reality. In fact, “assertive literarization of indigenous and hybrid languages,” notes Bandia, typifies particularly contemporary African fiction that results in a plurilingual translation reflecting the multiple languages of the original (“Translation and Cultural Trends” 250).14 Broadly speaking, Europhone literature produced by African writers is “doubly structured”: by its linguistic region as well as its nation-state or continent. The expression “doublement structuré” is used by Sapiro to characterize the translation market, embedded within the book market, and simultaneously configurated by linguistic as well as geographical origins (“Translation” 9). Nonetheless, as a marginal literature within the paradigm of Franco-French literature in an anglophone dominated global book market, francophone subSaharan texts may also benefit from their ambiguous position. First, texts written in a central language such as French are likely to be accessible to a larger number of international editors wishing to judge for themselves the quality of a foreign work than a text presented in a (semi-)peripheral language. Once a text has been translated into one of the central languages by “an authoritative publisher,” it immediately attracts the attention of editors globally (Heilbron 436). Unequal access to the international scene by literary works from different linguistic regions is determined to a decisive extent by the editors’ knowledge of that language, confirms Sapiro (Introduction 42). Books written (or translated) in central or “gateway” languages, such as English, French, or German, have a better chance of being (re)translated. Scrutiny by foreign editors will be most intense whenever a British or American editor acquires translation rights of a foreign book, considered the best recommendation for potential foreign rights buyers in other linguistic spaces. Furthermore, communication between peripheral languages usually

34

Chapter 1

passes through “the center,” implying the involvement of a supplementary translation (Sapiro, Translatio 30). For instance, a text in Wolof may only catch the attention of a potential anglophone editor after it has been translated into French. Another consequential asset of French-language literature pertains to translation and promotion subsidies by French government organizations that mediate between publishers in different linguistic spaces. The French Publishers’ Agency in New York—affiliated with the Bureau international de l’édition française (BIEF) and established in 1983 with subsidies from the French government—handles English world-rights for French publishing firms and constitutes its own catalogue. It deducts 15 percent commission on book sales as well as a contribution for canvassing (Sapiro, Introduction 32).15 A number of our corpus novels published in France have benefited from these subsidies. Unfortunately, African governments and public organizations have not been forthcoming in providing financial support in the form of grants for literary translation or facilitating the sale of book rights abroad, concerned as they are with “more pressing demands for public service translators” (Bandia, “Translation as Reparation” 160). THE UNPOPULARITY OF FRENCHNESS In her study on the invisibility of contemporary French-language fiction within the British market of translated fiction, Marcella Frisani foregrounds the concept of “Frenchness” that bears cogent relevance for the marketability and appeal of sub-Saharan literature with respect to UK publishers. Analogous to the US book market, translated literature in the United Kingdom belongs to the category of “little books”—as opposed to “big books,” a term used by publishers to refer to bestsellers—that suffer from invisibility as a result of generally being carried by small publishers. These lack the financial means to negotiate discounts with book chains and supermarkets (Frisani 109–112). Frisani researched the existing image and symbolic value of French literature prevalent among agents active in the British publishing field, in light of the Bourdieusian theory according to which a (foreign) literature is perceived through a national prism that influences its reception. Is the notion of “Frenchness” understood by these agents as an obstacle? If so, how is it circumvented? Frisani defines “Frenchness” as denoting “a category used within British editorial circles to refer to a certain image that these publishers have of French literature as well as the national symbolic capital that it represents” (128).16 Although the concept is exemplified in a myriad of forms, the contemporary French novel is perceived by these agents, “hyperlecteurs,” as difficult: “navel gazing,” “too

Francophone African Narratives

35

self-indulgent,” “quirky,” “slightly non-mainstream” (Frisani quotes these qualifications in English; 129).17 Searching for more “plot-driven” novels “with good stories and appealing characters,” that enchant the British readers, and assessing the financial risk of investment in the acquisition of translation rights, these editors scour the French literary field for literature “with a new international perspective”: African, Caribbean, and (second- or third-generation) “cultural migrant” authors alike. As examples of francophone authors are cited Tahar Ben Jelloun, Alain Mabanckou, Ahmadou Kourouma, Dany Laferrière, Boualem Sansal, Fatou Diome, Andrée Chédid, Yasmina Khadra, and Natasha Appanah (Frisani 132). One of the editors interviewed by Frisani explains the (relative) popularity in Britain of these authors (as opposed to the “inferior” reputation of the “Franco-French”) by arguing that British editors strive indirectly to teach the French publishers a lesson. By showing interest in these non-hexagonal French-language texts, these editors supposedly aim to spotlight the repressed colonial past shunned by French publishers, since most of these francophone writers are natives from former French colonies. This explanation seems rather unconvincing as it would acknowledge quite unorthodox motives for publication on the part of British presses.18 While universality, as a mark of great fiction, might persuade “big” publishers—the few that will venture on to the translation market—to buy translation rights of French contemporary fiction and disseminate it on a globalized anglophone market, small publishers in the United Kingdom, who face increasing commercial challenges and are unable to bid large sums of money for translation rights, offer an unequal quality of literary production. The various types of publishing houses and their role in the production of the literature of our corpus will be the subject of chapter 2 of this study. Suffice it to conclude at this stage that a handful of francophone sub-Saharan texts—three sub-Saharan African authors feature on Frisani’s list above: Mabanckou, Kourouma, and Diome—as specimen of an international perspective, were received more favorably by agents in the British publishing field than some literature too reminiscent of Frenchness. The rejection of Frenchness in literature has been echoed on the other side of the Atlantic. In his provocative Time article “The Death of French Culture” (December 2007),19 Donald Morrison asserts France’s loss of status as a cultural superpower not only on the global literary market but also on the international film and art scene, despite the government’s extensive financial efforts to promote hexagonal culture abroad. Arriving at similar conclusions as Frisani regarding British readership, Morrison ascribes Americans’ lack of interest in hexagonal literature to the introspective-nouveau-roman-like novel as well as a contemporary type of French “autofiction” à la Christine Angot and Catherine Millet. Nonetheless, he spots a glimmer of hope on the horizon for “France’s return to global glory”: “The country’s angry,

36

Chapter 1

ambitious minorities are committing to culture all over the place. France has become a multiethnic bazaar of art, music and writing from the banlieues and disparate corners of the nonwhite world” (33; emphasis added).20 Thus mirroring Frisani’s findings regarding the UK publishing market’s preference for literature with an international perspective, Morrison hails minorities as well as non-hexagonal writers and artists as an increasingly conspicuous source of “French” culture.21 Revitalization of France’s culture would allegedly emanate from its “ferment on the fringes” (33). Nevertheless, this somewhat reductive image, at least of French literature, fails to acknowledge the more recent ebb of experimental practices in French fiction and the gradual “retour au récit” (return to the narrative) toward the end of the 1980s, albeit not in the Balzacian sense of storytelling. For instance, in their foreword to Un retour des normes romanesques dans la littérature française contemporaine (2010), Wolfgang Asholt and Marc Dambre describe the (recent) “return” of the récit (narrative) in its multifarious new guises in France itself. Its “reappearance” in the world becomes, in fact, the dominant paradigm of recent research. Following this line of thought, Simon Kemp in “French Fiction into the Twenty-First Century: The Return to the Story” aims to answer the questions, “Where are we returning from?” and “Where exactly is the récit that we are returning to?” Alongside, the rise of life-writing, autofiction, the minimalist, and the ludic novel (to name but a few categories), literature written by Africans, Caribbeans, and migrants from postcolonial territories is merely one of the new categories that emerged since the 1980s (Kemp 12–13). A study by Sapiro on literary French-English translations published in the United States between 1990 and 2003 confirms that a significant number of French literary works, approximately 30 percent, originated from outside European francophone countries (France, Belgium, and Switzerland). Since the corpus of 859 titles—comprising all literary genres—incorporated retranslations of (intellectual) bestsellers, such as the Belgian novelist Georges Simenon (fifty-four titles) as well as classics by Verne, Molière, Balzac, Dumas, and Hugo (Les échanges littéraires 52–55), it can be inferred that non-European francophone authors were well represented within the category of contemporary French-language writing.22 PUBLICATION OF THE ORIGINAL FRENCH EDITIONS The 118 original French publications expand to 122 English translations, since some works were translated more than once.23 Both sets of titles have been mapped in charts, not dissimilar, albeit on a more modest scale, to Franco Moretti’s approach in Graphs, Maps and Trees (2007) in which he studies the rise of the novel on the basis of quantitative data (see figure 1.1

Francophone African Narratives

37

below). “Quantitative research provides data which is independent of interpretations,” affirms Moretti (Graphs 9). These carefully established sets of data form a solid basis for subsequent comparisons with hexagonal, African, and global trends in book production, leading to more nuanced “conjectures,” that allow us to validate or reject previous ones. The first question to consider is the place of publication of the Frenchlanguage edition of the corpus narratives. For unknown and unpublished writers seeking to emerge on the literary scene, identifying an editor willing to publish their work can be a harrowing experience. This is a fortiori the case for an African author residing in a sub-Saharan country that allows access to a very limited local publishing and distribution infrastructure. Until independence, exclusively printing houses, generally specialized in printing official documents, were operative in West Africa. Gradually, publishing began to be included as a secondary activity by some, while other publishers developed with support from churches (such as the in 1963 established CLE, Centre de Littérature Evangélique, in Cameroon) or were controlled in majority by French publishers (e.g., the CEDA, Centre d’Edition et de Diffusion Africaines, in Ivory Coast founded in 1961).24 In 1972, Léopold Sédar Senghor created Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines in Dakar, with offices in Abidjan and Lomé operative until 1988. Yet, despite recent initiatives taken particularly by female editors, publishing conditions continue to remain unfavorable in sub-Saharan Africa where (contrary to France) the state is rarely involved, a book policy is lacking and where supplementary taxes on books increase the already high book price. Pinhas asserts, in 2012, that symbolic recognition of francophone authors continues to depend predominantly on French publishers, especially if the authors seek consecration of a novel, the dominant genre (Editer 44–74; “L’édition”). This status quo is confirmed by the pie chart in figure 1.1 visualizing the location of the first French publication of the narratives under investigation: 82 percent were published in Paris, 5 percent outside Paris—cumulatively 87 percent in France—approximately 6 percent in Dakar, 3 percent both in Yaoundé and in Abidjan—cumulatively 12 percent in West Africa—and 2 percent in Montreal. Notwithstanding the preponderance of Paris/France as a publication location of sub-Saharan narratives subsequently translated into English, African literary production in general (i.e., including works not translated into English) presents a more nuanced picture. According to Ducournau, approximately half of francophone sub-Saharan literary production originates from French printing presses.25 However, it seems that African novels—as opposed to poems, essays, or plays—have a better chance of getting published on the French literary market than other genres since African publishers concentrate on smaller works: between 1960 and 1990, 70 percent of books with fewer than seventy pages were published in Africa. Moreover, 70 percent of inventoried

38

Chapter 1

Figure 1.1  Location of Publication of (118) Original French Corpus Narratives (1921–2017).

publishers before 1990 should be labeled as “occasional,” not as professional publishers but as printers or research institutes for NGOs, likely to disappear during an economic or political crisis (Ducournau quotes Cévaër, Ecrire 100). Regarding our corpus narratives, this would account for the sharp downturn in literary production in the latter half of the 1980s, as illustrated below in figure 1.2, when several West African countries—Benin, Ivory Coast, Mali, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo—were impacted by an economic crisis. Besides disrupting or even financially crippling publishers and printers, this dismal economic conjuncture also diminished the purchasing power of potential book buyers (Ducournau, La Fabrique 94). Two other obstacles that African authors face need to be briefly acknowledged in this context: the issue of a limited African readership and the problem of censorship by African governments. For whom do they write, these authors hailing from a region where literacy rates drop as low as 31 percent, and where French is merely an official language, not the language of communication (although people might speak two or three local idioms)?26 In a 1998 interview with Ambroise Kom, Mongo Beti—at the time a bookstore owner in Yaoundé— admits in plain language that in Cameroon, among a population of 15 million, there may be 3,000 to 4,000 readers, of whom perhaps 100 are potential buyers (Kom 190). Cévaër adumbrates the scission (whose outlines are distinguishable

Francophone African Narratives

39

in the early 1980s) between two separate editorial and cultural contexts with corresponding production circuits: on the one hand, a “black metropolitan” (“négropolitain”) literature, defined as literature by African authors living in Paris; on the other hand, a “regional” literature, intended initially for local (African) consumption and an African readership. Cévaër concludes that these writers need to choose their audience and their “natural place of expression”27 (vii–viii). Yet, many writers critical of post-independence African regimes have no choice. Confronted with censorship in their native countries, the local editorial infrastructure is no option for authors, such as, to name but a few, Camara Laye who eventually had to flee his native Guinea; Mongo Beti whose work was censored in Africa; Jean-Marie Adaffi who denounced the “ideological embargo” by the African publishing houses (Cévaër, interview with Adaffi, 23–24), or Ahmadou Kourouma forced into exile.28 Therefore, as “gatekeepers of ideas”29 it is predominantly the publishers based in Paris who decide what African literature—described as “black metropolitan” (“négropolitaine”) by Cévaër—is published, and subsequently most frequently granted access to the anglophone/global book market via translation. For African writers, this creates a paradoxical situation, argues Calargé. While Paris epitomizes for most authors a neutral place where artistic freedom reigns—a place of opportunity for all—with respect to francophone authors, the capital of the “World Republic of Letters” exemplifies the metropolis of political and literary domination. As capital of the former French Empire, Paris fails to judge these writers’ work objectively, contends Calargé, adding, “whenever writers are marginalized in Paris, they are marginalized worldwide” (3).30 Indeed, this characterization may arguably be deemed exact with respect to the mainstream Parisian literary establishment, and thus reduce the chances of dissemination beyond linguistic boundaries. France’s amnesia regarding its colonial past has been a germane explanation for the marginalization by certain publishers (as well as the press) of francophone (African) writers for several decades. (Circumstances that, I will argue in the pages to follow, have evolved since the new millennium.) It is the clash between, on the one hand, the Republican model as defined since the French Revolution, and on the other, the oppression and inequality inherent in the colonial regime, that is responsible for this “repression” (“refoulement”) or “eclipse” (“occultation”)31 of France’s colonial past. “Unveiling” the past would furthermore call into question the Hexagon’s neocolonial ties with its former colonies and endanger its more recent political and economic policies regarding these nations.32 However, sociopolitical developments in France, particularly since the early 2000s, have ushered in a raised awareness and recognition of non-hexagonal French-language literature, including African texts. Closer scrutiny of the editorial practices regarding the original publication of our corpus narratives will reveal this more nuanced picture. Figure 1.2 illustrates a timeline per five-year intervals of the average number of original French publications of the corpus narratives since the

40

Chapter 1

Figure 1.2  Number of Original French Publications and English Translations of Corpus Narratives Published per Five-Year Intervals (1921–2017).

early 1920s, as well as the subsequent publications of their translation into English.33 Taking into account the exploding global book production as described above, it is not surprising that the switchback graph representing our corpus production displays a gradual increase of literary production over time—on the original publication and the translation timeline alike—albeit marked by substantial irregularities. The low numbers of narratives before the 1950s, both on the production and on the translation timelines, can be partially explained by the preference of Negritude writers for poetry as a means of expression. During the interwar period, African fiction writing as a literary tradition was still in its infancy, with such narratives (that were not translated, and, therefore, not part of our corpus) as Les Trois Volontés de Malic (1920) by Ahmadou Mapaté Diagne, Force-Bonté (1926) by Bakary Diallo and Félix Couchoro’s L’Esclave (1929), qualified variously as colonial, regional or ethnographic writing.34 The exception in many respects remains Batouala by René Maran (published in 1921 and translated in 1922), while Paul Hazoumé’s historical novel Doguicimi, published in 1938, was eventually translated into English in 1985, forty-seven years after its original publication. A flurry of publications, notably of anticolonial writing, emerges in the 1950s. With respect to the number of corpus translations, these start to exceed the number of original publications in the early 1980s, partly as the result of

Francophone African Narratives

41

the rise in popularity of new disciplines in Anglo-American academia, as will be argued in the next chapter. Activity on both timelines is relatively intense in the 1980s—with a total of twenty-one original publications and twentyeight translations—followed by a sharp decline in the early 1990s and a surge of both literary productions during the first ten years of the new millennium— twenty-eight publications as well as twenty-five translations. Finally, we observe a significant boost between 2010 and 2017, with thirty-three translations versus thirteen publications, although the number of publications since 2010 that will be translated will most certainly continue to grow as a result of new translations. I will return to the aspect of translation time lag in the next section, since it is indicative of the interest by foreign publishers in the literary works under consideration. Not surprisingly, the original production of our corpus narratives follows more or less the trajectory of francophone sub-Saharan literature in general. Regarding the latter, Ducournau observes a steady increase from 1960 to 1985, followed by a slowdown and a steep decrease in the mid-1990s and a final boost around 2000. Comparing the publication trends in sub-Saharan African with those in France, she remarks that the production of the former has been more sensitive to economic fluctuations and, therefore, considerably more erratic than the latter (La Fabrique 89–90). THE PUBLISHER: CREATOR OF SYMBOLIC CAPITAL As previously mentioned, since the late 1950s France’s editorial landscape has been profoundly reshaped as a result of the gradual worldwide process of rationalization and hyper-concentration within the publishing industry.35 What is more, there are no indications that this development is coming to an end. In France, François Rouet identifies the completion of a first cycle of horizontal concentration of editorial power around a couple of large corporations in the 1970s: two “editorial groups,” or a “duopole,” emerge around Presses de la Cité and Hachette Livre. In 2017, after several subsequent concentration phases in the 1980s and 1990s during which most formerly independent presses are taken over as imprints by larger publishers or corporations, Hachette Livre remains the leader by an enormous margin, with Editis following in second place, while the ten market leaders earned 88.9 percent of total turnover (Piault, “Classement 2018” 21).36 Nevertheless, embedded in their parent companies, the midsize publishers have continued to play an important role within the French editorial landscape during the past decades: “Between the two large groups and the very small presses [. . .] publishing has for a long time been the sector favored by medium-sized presses with a certain reputation and editorial tradition, businesses that were largely family-owned” (Rouet 115).37 In 2007, Rouet identifies the following

42

Chapter 1

“gang of four” (“bande à quatre”) in this category: Gallimard, Flammarion, Le Seuil, and Albin Michel, alongside a prodigious number of very small presses, very few of whom remain(ed) viable (115).38 The size and/or reputation of a publishing company—whatever the criteria used to determine this, be it turnover, number of titles published per year or employees—as well as its position within the cultural field, have an incidence on the symbolic value of a book and can, therefore, greatly impact its visibility, marketing and sales. Titles issued by midsize presses—that have more clout among the critics and are more likely to be reviewed in major news outlets than those issued by small presses—are also more prone to feature prominently on book store displays and book shelves as well as on online sales websites. We need only consider the influence of some highbrow publishers such as the trio Gallimard, Le Seuil, and Grasset—collectively and unflatteringly referred to as “Galligrasseuil”—that have swept up many of the leading literary prizes since the 1970s, in order to fathom the symbolic value of their name on a book’s cover. To distinguish between different categories of publishers according to their importance as cultural producers that launch the literary work, Appendix 2 provides a rationale concerning the categorization of French mainstream publishers into midsize and small presses. Besides the mainstream publishers—the so-called “généralistes”—we must distinguish another nonnegligible category of publishers with respect to our corpus of sub-Saharan narratives: those specialized in African (and “New World” or

Figure 1.3  Original French Publications (118) per Publisher Category (1921–2017).

Francophone African Narratives

43

“Third World”) literature (see list in Appendix 3—Specialized publishers of French corpus narratives). Figure 1.3 distinguishes between the categories of publishing firms responsible for the original French-language editions of our corpus narratives. All mainstream publishers—comprising small and midsize ones—constitute by far the most significant category of publishers for our corpus narratives, accounting for a total of 66 percent. In other words, the chances of being selected for an English translation almost double when the sub-Saharan narrative’s first edition is published by a mainstream hexagonal publishing house, as opposed to a specialized publisher or a press located outside France. This largest category is divided into a separate section for, on the one hand, midsize presses (46 percent), such as Gallimard, Grasset, and Le Seuil, and on the other hand, the small publishers (20 percent), a category that includes presses like Anne Carrière, J-C Lattès, or Philippe Rey. Specialized publishers of African (and “New World” or “Third World”) literature in France account for a mere 21 percent of sub-Saharan narratives that are subsequently translated into English. Among the specialized publishers in African literatures, located in France, Présence Africaine issued fifteen texts, followed by L’Harmattan with seven.39 The prominent role that Présence Africaine played, notably in the early production of African literature, is best illustrated by the considerable number of African texts that the press disseminated overall (i.e., including all texts, not exclusively those translated into English): until 1990, it published the largest number of African literary texts (164) in the métropole (Ducournau, La Fabrique 119). Nevertheless, it is an analysis of the dominant publisher categories per decade, as presented in figure 1.4, which reveals more nuanced and compelling trends. Of the thirteen corpus narratives published in the 1950s only three (23 percent) were published by Présence Africaine.40 Moreover, the time lag between the original publication of these three novels and the translation amounted to an extremely high average of almost forty-six years while the overall translation time delay was nineteen years for this period (see figure 1.5 below). Thus, although Présence Africaine provided unique publishing opportunities to African writers for several decades, this specialized press— representing modest symbolic capital—was unable to proffer much visibility to its published texts and its authors in the metropolis, at least in the 1950s and 1960s. It is, therefore, not surprising that promising African authors turned to commercial mainstream publishers, such as Plon, Julliard, Seghers, Laffont, and Buchet Chastel that took on the publication of nine out of ten corpus narratives during the 1950s. These represented works by Camara Laye, Ferdinand Oyono, Mongo Beti, Bernard Dadié, authors who, not coincidentally, had all resided in France for at least several years. In the 1950s, France’s political and social climate was favorable to the reception of this

44

Chapter 1

“new” African literature.41 At the time, Parisian mainstream publishers were enthralled by the idea of featuring African (black) writers in their collection, as confirmed by Adele King: “Claude Wauthier, the distinguished French writer and journalist, told me that the French encouraged African writers, because writing books was seen as proof of the success of the colonial system of education” (Rereading 15). As publishers sought writers in accordance with their political and ideological convictions—mostly anti-colonialist but also pro-Union Française—Mongo Beti and Ferdinand Oyono were among the most coveted in the mid-1950s. Mongo Beti, who received offers from five editors for his novel The Poor Christ of Bomba, reported a request by an editor from Julliard: “If you know of another African writer, refer him to me” (Kom 78).42 Yet, most of these sought-after African writers—published in Paris by mainstream presses in the 1950s despite their fierce criticism of the colonial regime—had to wait almost a decade and a half before their work came out in an English translation in Heinemann’s African Writers Series. On the other hand, Camara Laye’s first two novels, which lacked an anticolonial message, were translated into English and published by mainstream anglophone publishing firms within, respectively, one and two years of their original publication. The end of the French colonial era in West Africa was marked by a profound disruption of the sub-Saharan literary scene: African writers who had previously felt compelled to write about the colonial injustices they witnessed needed time to adjust to the neocolonial political situation in order to rediscover their voice, if they desired to continue their literary activities at all. Once the colonial situation had been “resolved,” the potential French metropolitan readership became largely indifferent to Africa, its problems and its literary production (Dehon 43).43 This predicament is reflected in the publications of our corpus narratives in the 1960s by French mainstream as well as specialized publishers. Although overall numbers remained stable, both categories include several second or third texts by African writers who had already published in France in the preceding decade, such as Camara Laye, Ferdinand Oyono, Bernard Dadié, and Ousmane Sembène.44 The dismaying publishing circumstances in the 1960s are particularly well illustrated by Ahmadou Kourouma’s foiled efforts to solicit interest for his first, linguistically effervescent novel The Suns of Independence, initially rejected by all African and French editors, and eventually, after modifications approved by the author, published in 1968 by the Presses de l’Université de Montréal in Canada. The remainder of the story is well-known: Kourouma’s novel was consecrated by the Canadian literary prize “le prix pour la Francité,” awarded for the first time in 1967, after which Le Seuil, finally recognizing the innovative qualities of the text’s style and contemporary theme, bought the rights of Kourouma’s preeminent work for the symbolic sum of one Canadian dollar.

Francophone African Narratives

45

“For a book to be successful it must first be published in France!” (Armel 99),45 judged Kourouma, not devoid of irony. No doubt Le Seuil’s editors were also emboldened to publish Kourouma’s debut novel as a result of the initial success of their first sub-Saharan literary work Bound by Violence by the Malian author Yambo Ouologuem that came out in 1968. It was hailed by a critic of Le Monde as “perhaps the first African novel worthy of this name” (Galey II).46 Awarded one of the most prestigious French literary prizes, the prix Renaudot, Ouologuem received critical acclaim from both sides of the Atlantic before being accused of plagiarism soon after the English translation appeared in 1971.47 However, this damaging incident, not only for Ouologuem’s personal reputation but also for the prestige of African literature as a whole, did not prevent Le Seuil from accepting manuscripts from other sub-Saharan authors thereafter. On the contrary, this mainstream Parisian publishing house, established in the 1930s, came to play a critical role in the dissemination of the francophone sub-Saharan narratives of our corpus. Already in the early 1950s, Emmanuel Roblès, born in the Algerian city of Oran, initiated discussions with Paul Flamand, Le Seuil’s literary director, on the subject of a special collection for North African writers such as Mouloud Feraoun and Mohammed Dib. Although Roblès created the label “Méditerranée” in 1953, its aim was allegedly not to ghettoize literary production by the “colonized” whose work was published in the Cadre vert collection for foreign literature. The designation “Méditerranée” was simply added on the cover of both the “Cadre vert” and the “Cadre rouge” series; the framing colors were an indication of the text’s linguistic provenance, respectively, a text translated into French (green frame) and an originally French text (red frame). Le Seuil invested heavily in the symbolic capital of translated foreign literature, attaining the status of “grande maison littéraire” (major literary publisher) in the mid-1970s. It eventually occupied a secure position in the publishing field between the more commercial Laffont and the intellectually avant-garde oriented Editions de Minuit (Serry 71–75).48 Yet, instead of creating a specific series—such as the Méditerannée label mentioned above or Gallimard’s “Continents noirs” series explored below—for the nineteen corpus narratives that Le Seuil published over time, these texts by such authors as Monénembo, Kourouma, and Mabanckou appeared alongside French classics and contemporary writers, mostly in the “cadre rouge” series (seventeen titles) and two in the more eclectic series Fiction & Cie.49 Le Seuil’s interest in African literature manifested itself notably in the late 1990s, as will be borne out by further analysis. However, before embarking on an exploration of this significant turning point the general trends in the publication landscape of the intervening decades, the 1970s and 1980s, require closer scrutiny.

46

Chapter 1

Figure 1.4  Number of Publications per Decade of Original French Corpus Narratives (118) per Publisher Category (1921–2017).

Figure 1.4 illustrates the steady decline of the percentage of corpus narratives published by specialized publishers: from 39 percent in the 1970s to 20 percent in the 1990s and an average of 6 to 7 percent in the 2000s. Similarly, corpus narratives issued by presses in Africa—such as the Centre de Littérature Evangélique (CLE) in Yaoundé, Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines (NEA) in Dakar and the CEDA and Nouvelles Editions Ivoiriennes in Abidjan—decreased from 28 percent in the 1970s to 24 percent in the 1980s, to disappear almost completely out of sight since the 1990s.50 In other words, over time, the chances for francophone texts of reaching the AngloAmerican market (in an English translation) issued in West Africa diminished drastically. As previously stated, as a specialized press Présence Africaine published the largest number of titles until the 1990s. Nevertheless, after the passing of its idealistic founder Alioune Diop in 1980 financial difficulties

Francophone African Narratives

47

increased, as attested by several authors and editors of African literature interviewed by Françoise Cévaër.51 In the 1990s, Christiane Yande Diop, in charge of Présence Africaine since her husband’s death and not refuting these problems, continued to uphold its idealistic mission: “Our mission is purely cultural and African, not commercial; which by the way causes a number of problems for us today” (Cévaër 195).52 Presumably in an attempt to explain Présence Africaine’s quandary, Mrs. Diop specified that literary production was predominantly destined for Africa, adding that Présence Africaine provided the excerpts in African schoolbooks for which returns on investment were ludicrously low. Le Seuil’s literary adviser, Gilles Carpentier, attributed Présence Africaine’s predicament also to “historical reasons,” questioning its “Africanness” thirty years after independence. African writers should have the choice between smaller publishers in Africa—implying authentic African publishers located on the African continent—and large publishers in Paris, Carpentier argued (Cévaër 170). In fact, in the 1970s and 1980s new specialized publishers emerged on the Parisian editorial scene. The most notable one was L’Harmattan. More commercially oriented than Présence Africaine according to Christiane Diop, the founders of L’Harmattan acquired P. J. Oswald’s collection in 1975. Eventually, it was said to have taken on the role of “mandatory route for every African wishing to get published in France” (Mbog).53 Indeed, in the 1980s it published four narratives of our corpus, outshining Présence Africaine accounting for only two. Specializing in Third World, African, Caribbean fiction and nonfiction, including scholarly texts, L’Harmattan boasted in 1997 an annual literary production of 800 titles—the equivalent of Gallimard, reported Antoine de Gaudemar. An immense drawback for L’Harmattan’s authors is that they are required to deliver their formatted manuscript ready for printing (“prêt-à-clicher”) and receive 7 percent compensation starting from the 1001st copy (Gaudemar).54 Since, according to L’Harmattan’s founder Denis Pryen, a print run of more than 500 is uncommon and poetry volumes and essays rarely exceed between 100 to 300 copies, authors will seldom benefit financially from their publications with this publisher. The system functions well, retorts Pryen, adding, “what bothers others is that we have an innovative method that allows books to exist.”55 Embittered after his publication of two essays with L’Harmattan, Charles Guebogue describes this experience as a millstone around the writers’ neck for the rest of their career. In defiance of Guebogue’s statement, it must be emphasized that specialized Parisian publishers such as Présence Africaine and L’Harmattan have provided an opportunity to some talented and eventually successful francophone African authors to publish their first work. Mongo Beti, for instance, debuted at Présence Africaine with Ville cruelle in 1954. Alioune Diop—who already at the time proclaimed the Cameroonian a great author and who did not

48

Chapter 1

begrudge him a wider readership for his work than Présence Africaine could offer—encouraged Mongo Beti to submit his second manuscript to more commercial publishers (Kom 77–78). Likewise, L’Harmattan accepted three poetry volumes by Alain Mabanckou in the 1990s, while Présence Africaine published his first two novels in 1998 and 2001 before the Congolese-born author was consecrated by the Renaudot prize in 2006 for Mémoires d’un porc-épic (Memoirs of a Porcupine). Lastly, four of Ousmane Sembène’s works that were subsequently translated into English first appeared in a French edition by Présence Africaine (three) and L’Harmattan (one). Notwithstanding the important role played by these specialized publishers—and notably Présence Africaine early on—from the 1970s to the early 1990s with respect to some burgeoning African authorships, mainstream publishing houses in France (including such prominent ones as Gallimard and Le Seuil) steadily increased their share of the corpus narratives: though in the 1970s they accounted for only 33 percent of these publications, in the 1980s their share had risen to 43 percent, to attain 90 percent in the 2000s. Unfortunately, with the exception of Le Seuil, contributions remained very dispersed and few and far between, each mainstream press issuing not more than one to three publications over a period of three decades.56 In her research on overall African literary production, Ducournau concludes that the mainstream French publishing houses that did publish their first African author before independence disseminated very few in the following decades. In fact, she infers: “No French mainstream publisher publishes their ‘first’ African author between 1962 and 1994 which shows a relative disinterest during more than thirty years” (Ecrire 141).57 Nonetheless, those francophone sub-Saharan narratives that were selected for publication by mainstream publishers had a far better chance of eventually crossing the linguistic boundary into the Anglo-American book market. Having accrued substantial symbolic capital, midsize mainstream publishers in particular also possess more marketing muscle and international visibility than smaller or specialized presses. RECOGNITION OF FRANCOPHONE (AFRICAN) FICTION IN FRANCE Ducournau identifies two waves of recognition regarding African authors by the French literary establishment before the new millennium.58 The first followed the election of the poet and president of Senegal, Léopold Sédar Senghor, to the Académie Française in the summer of 1983 which attracted considerable media attention in France. Concurrently, a cluster of specialized African publishers and collections emerged on the French editorial landscape.59 Though marginally reflected in the original literary production of our corpus

Francophone African Narratives

49

narratives by a 17 percent gain, this increased interest is particularly echoed in the production of English translations throughout the 1980s which more than doubled with respect to the 1970s. However, this enthusiasm demonstrated by the Anglo-American market is no doubt attributable to factors linked to a specific academic interest, as will be discussed in detail in the next chapter. The second wave of interest in francophone sub-Saharan authors by publishers in France, as identified by Ducournau, occurs toward the middle of the 1990s as “mainstreamers” create new special collections or increasingly sprinkle their general catalogues with titles from the African subcontinent.60 Again, due to the translation time lag, this relative “effervescence” in the hexagonal book market, “translates” itself to the anglophone literary space only after the millennium turn. Ducournau quotes the specialist in African literature Bernard Magnier as saying that the “turning point” (“retournement”) takes place in the mid-1990s: “Although it [this turning point] does not render African literature ‘fashionable’ it makes it ‘at least more visible’” (Ecrire 179).61 As a consequence of globalization and a growth in literary translation, African literature is finally welcomed in France, similarly to any other foreign literature, opines Bernard Loupias. The Togolese writer Kossi Efoui refers to this development as African literatures’ departure from a long period of marginalization (78). In the same vein, Elsa Schifano inquires in 2003: “Why has Africa become a publishing subject since approximately five years?” (15).62 For decades, the authors concerned had expressed discontent regarding the lack of visibility of African literature within the French literary establishment, the press and the French curriculum. Finally, the French literary establishment seemed to prudently embark on an opening-up gesture of its traditional Franco-French stronghold, although clear signals in the guise of literary consecration manifested themselves a few years later. Of course, as mentioned, publication by midsize mainstream publishers implies more attention from the media, more publicity, more print runs, and increased chances of a paperback version, as illustrated by an article in the mainstream (leftist) magazine Le Nouvel Observateur published in June 2000. Under the title “An African wind blows through French publishing,”63 Bernard Loupias announces that numerous black writers have never before sparked so much curiosity from presses such as Le Serpent à Plumes, Dapper, Actes Sud and Gallimard; they are now fighting over them (52). When he asks Jean-Noël Schifano for what reasons he initiated the new series “Continents noirs” for the “venerable” publisher Gallimard, thus ghettoizing reputable West Indies writers such as Patrick Chamoiseau and Edouard Glissant, the editor justifies his recent creation by invoking the public’s ignorance about Africa. Presumably, inclusion in a designated collection augments the recognition of these African texts within the French literary establishment, though, I would add, the effect on their visibility among anglophone publishers remains

50

Chapter 1

unclear. Yet, as long as special collections continue to exist in French publishing for authors with roots in “black continents,” concerns of ghettoization will not be allayed, nor will we be able to speak of a complete “normalization of the gaze” (“normalisation du regard”) with respect to the reception of African literature in France, according to Maria-Beneditto Basto (qtd. by Ducournau, Ecrire 178).64 A similar concern is voiced by several signatories of the manifesto “littérature-monde en français” (Ducournau, La Fabrique 57–62), a subject to which we will return later. It would take another decade before an African author would finally be included in Gallimard’s “general” La Blanche edition. Of a total of twenty-eight corpus narratives published in the first decade of the new millennium, twenty-six (93 percent) originate from mainstream publishers, including eight from Le Seuil (figure 1.4). Relatively young publishing houses such as Actes Sud, Le Serpent à Plumes, and Philippe Rey are each listed with two or three publications, while the specialized publishers Présence Africaine and L’Harmattan are only represented by one title each.65 What has not gone unnoticed is the inclusion of several titles in the collection of one of France’s largest and most prestigious independent publishers, Gallimard.66 While texts by Abdourahman Waberi (Transit) and Scholastique Mukasonga (Inyenzi ou les Cafards/ Cockroaches and NotreDame du Nil/Our Lady of the Nile) appear in the “Continents noirs” series discussed above, Alain Mabanckou’s Demain j’aurai vingt ans (Tomorrow I will be twenty years old) is issued in Gallimard’s vaunted La Blanche series, the publishing house’s pinnacle that places authors alongside luminaries such as Proust and Camus. The combination of a publication by the distinguished French publisher and the consecration by the illustrious Renaudot prize—in the case of Mabanckou’s Memoirs of a Porcupine in 2006 and Mukasonga’s Our Lady of the Nile in 2012—confers a virtually talismanic status on authors and their work. As chapter 3 will be devoted entirely to the effect of consecration via literary prizes on the visibility of the literary works in question, suffice it to mention in this context that between 2000 and 2017, the esteemed Renaudot prize was awarded four times to the text of a francophone sub-Saharan writer, increasing its visibility drastically and leading almost instantly to an afterlife of the work in translation.67 In fact, the new millennium hails the beginning of meaningful recognition, in France, of non-hexagonal French-language literature in general, including francophone African writing and its authors.68 For instance, finally acknowledged by the French cultural elite, the Moroccan writer Tahar Ben Jelloun is elected unanimously as a member of the Académie Goncourt in 2008, while the Haitian-Canadian Dany Laferrière is inducted into the Académie Française in 2013.69 African writers are consecrated by the Renaudot and other prestigious literary prizes, and their success is echoed by some iconic

Francophone African Narratives

51

itineraries, such as Alain Mabanckou’s trajectory to international fame. Winner of the 2006 Renaudot prize and the Académie Française grand prix for lifetime achievement in 2012, a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize for his complete oeuvre, and visiting professor at the eminent Collège de France in 2016 are just a few jewels in the Franco-Congolese writer’s crown. Furthermore, acknowledgment of his literary and academic talent by universities in the United States where he was welcomed in the academic ranks—as have been various other African scholars and writers—could not fail to contribute to his international reputation and place African literature in the global limelight. Mabanckou was also among the forty-four signatories of the 2007 manifesto “Pour une ‘littérature-monde’ en français,” which spurred a flurry of debates and conferences in (international) literary and academic circles regarding the equal plane of all French-language writing, analogous to the anglophone model of world literature.70 In a similar vein, researchers from various disciplines had met a year previously at a conference to discuss the position of the “Anglophone intellectual movement” of postcolonial studies in France. In the introduction to the proceedings, the editor Marie-Claude Smouts summarizes some of the possible explanations for their late arrival in French academia: a certain defiance vis-à-vis postmodernism, France’s rigid compartmentalization of academic disciplines, the Republican model and its problematic concept of otherness, as well as the persistence of the colonial trauma. This “postcolonial situation” presented itself via the margins, the overseas territories (“les marges, les outres-mers”) (59), that are no longer colonies, but not completely independent either, suggests Smouts, referencing Françoise Vergès. Thus, Smouts forges a clear connection between on the one hand, the literary/academic sphere, and on the other historical, sociopolitical circumstances. Indeed, the changing literary field constitutes, to speak with Bourdieu, a “relatively autonomous universe [. . .] which is to say, of course, that it is also relatively dependent, notably with respect to the economic field and the political field” (The Rules of Art 141; emphasis added). During the first decade of the twenty-first century, this relationship of relative dependence, particularly with respect to the political field, is quite conspicuous, that is, recognition of francophone literature in general, including migrant and sub-Saharan narratives (and their increased scrutiny by academics), coincides with a political climate that is singularly focused on the problems of France’s colonial past, immigration, and national identity. Intensified globalization and mass migration of refugees and asylum seekers as a result of geopolitical upheavals profoundly changed the European political landscape and swayed public discourse in France. In the aftermath of the French defeat in Indochina in 1954 and the Algerian conflicts in the 1950s and early 1960s, France had adopted the so-called “politique de l’oubli,” that is, the politics

52

Chapter 1

of erasure of France’s colonial past from the collective memory. Bancel and Blanchard go as far as to pinpoint 2005 as the year that France’s colonial history finally reemerges to the collective memory. “A page is turned, the ‘colonial memory’ permeates all of French society. The recent but intense emergence of these memories of colonization is an opportunity to question what we call ‘the colonial memory,’” conclude Bancel and Blanchard (22).71 The authors refer to the “resurfacing” of the “mémoire coloniale” as one of the important questions of the period that dominated the media and that manifested itself, among other things, in the promulgation of the controversial article 4 of the Debré 2005-8 law requiring curricula to stress the “positive” aspects of France’s overseas presence, that is its past empire.72 Historically, France’s inability to confront its colonial past had been informed by the fusion of colonialism and Republican ideology (“le modèle républicain”), an alliance that has reinforced and continues to sustain the construction of a national identity, argue Bancel and Blanchard (35–36). Indeed, the debate on national identity dominated French media at a time when immigration— a phenomenon closely tied to France’s colonial legacy—was reinforced by French (extreme) right-wing political parties. Thus, in 2007, president Sarkozy, following up on his campaign promises, established the Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-Development (abolished again in 2010); in 2009, he initiated the “national identity debate” in which identity and immigration became symbiotic, sparking a caustic public discussion. Shifting politically to the right, Sarkozy’s UMP cozied up to Marine Le Pen’s National Front party73 that had been warning for France’s loss of identity in the face of particularly non-European (Muslim) immigration surges. The objective of this national debate was “to reaffirm what the authorities defined as Republican ideals and values or at the very least to point the finger at those who most threatened them—Muslims, the sans-papiers, illegals, irregulars, the undocumented, and so forth” (Thomas, Africa and France 80). This political climate shaped not only the content and the marketability of increasingly popular migrant literature but also reflected the themes of some of our relatively successful corpus narratives that spotlight the experience of migrant and often marginalized characters, as in Fatou Diome’s Le Ventre de l’Atlantique (The Belly of the Atlantic, 2006), Abdourahman Waberi’s Aux Etats-Unis d’Afrique (In the United States of Africa, 2009) and Edem Awumey’s Les Pieds sales (Dirty Feet, 2011), to name but a few. At the beginning of this chapter, it was established that 66 percent (figure 1.3) of the first French editions—all translated into at least one other language, that is English—were published by French (predominantly Parisian) mainstream publishers. In other words, branding by this type of publisher materializes as a form of recognition that accrues symbolic capital to the

Francophone African Narratives

53

text and considerably increases the chances of further consecration via translation. With respect to translation into English, the essential role of the position in the publishing field, occupied by the original French publishing house disseminating a literary work, has also been illustrated by Gisèle Sapiro’s research on the overall literary exchanges between Paris and New York. Sapiro identifies Gallimard as the literary publisher providing by far the highest percentage of translations in the United States, that is 29 percent, trailed by Le Seuil with 7 percent—that, as mentioned, accepted an important number of our corpus authors in its “stable”—Presses de la Cité with 5 percent, Grasset and P.O.L. with each 4 percent, as well as others with even lower percentages (“Les échanges littéraires” 36). Specialized publishers, represented by less than 1 percent of translations, are included in the category “other,” accounting for a total of 28 percent of translations. These numbers corroborate the findings with respect to our corpus: mainstream publishers, such as Le Seuil, Gallimard and, more recently, Actes Sud—detain easier access to the international book market and thus increase visibility of their authors abroad. Lastly, cultural production that takes place in the French capital permits adequate exposure to all French media, both written and audiovisual, as well as to other agencies of legitimation, such as literary prize committees and government agencies. THE TRANSLATION TIME LAG Before embarking on an analysis of the Anglo-American editorial landscape that grant an afterlife to our corpus narratives, it is worthwhile examining the trends in time interval between the original production and the first English translations. Figure 1.5 displays this average time lag in number of years per decade for our complete corpus: after unrepresentative figures for the pre1950 period, the chart highlights a remarkable decline from a nineteen-year average in the 1950s to only three years in the 2010s. No less striking are the translation delay discrepancies between the various narratives that compose the average per decade. For instance, during the 1950s works L’Enfant Noir (Plon 1953) (The Dark Child/The African Child) and Le Regard du roi (Plon 1954) (The Radiance of the King) both appeared in an English translation within one, respectively, two years after the original publication, while in the case of Ville cruelle (Présence Africaine 1954) (Cruel City) by Eza Boto—Alexander Biyidi’s first adopted pen name that he subsequently changed to Mongo Beti—the anglophone reader had to wait fifty-nine years, until 2013, for an English translation. In the case of the works by Camara Laye and Mongo Beti, these disparities can be traced back to basic ideological differences in the texts’ perspective—a pro-Union Française and

54

Chapter 1

Figure 1.5  Average Time Lag in Number of Years per Decade between the Original French Publication and the First English Translation of (118) Corpus Narratives (1921– 2017).

an anti-colonialist stance, respectively—that roused the interest of different types of publishers.74 In the writing and publication of L’Enfant Noir by the mainstream Parisian publisher Plon, a team of “nègres blancs” (white ghostwriters) were involved in the launching of this simple and “authentic” African childhood memoir that painted an irenic picture of life under French colonial rule. Praised in some glowing reviews in France and Belgium, and awarded the Prix Charles Veillon 1954, the Guinean’s text immediately garnered the attention of mainstream publishers in the United Kingdom and the United States, who recognized its market potential and its appeal to the Western reader. On the other hand, Mongo Beti’s first novel, Ville cruelle, critical of the colonial regime, was issued by the specialized Parisian publisher of African literature, Présence Africaine, as part of the volume Trois écrivains noirs.75 When Mongo Beti’s second work, Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba, appeared in 1956 the few critics who did review it made no mention of his first work. Admittedly, neither the change of pen name nor the inclusion in a volume of short stories increased Ville cruelle’s visibility. It was finally an American university press, Indiana University Press, that issued its translation in 2013. The motifs for publishing this overdue translation almost sixty years after its original publication will be discussed in the next chapter. Its first objective is to present the Anglo-American editorial world, including an investigation of the category of presses willing to take on the challenge and risk of investing in a marginal translated literature. In the process of rampant

Francophone African Narratives

55

commercialization of the publishing industry what could motivate these agents to publish literature that often chooses to mask its true source, that is, its “translatedness”? NOTES 1. Thompson specifies that these figures based on numbers provided by the American Book Publishing Record (ABPR) “exclude ‘on demand’ and short-run digitally printed books which were estimated to account for an additional 285,394 titles in 2008.” In the same year, publications in the United Kingdom had risen to over 120,000 titles (239–240) while, according to a study by the Syndicat national de l’édition, new editorial production in France amounted in 2016 to 47,197 titles. https​:/​/ww​​w​.sne​​.fr​/d​​ocume​​nt​/sy​​nthes​​e​-des​​-repe​​res​-s​​tatis​​ti​que​​s​-201​​62017​/ Accessed November 25, 2019. While methods used to calculate book production doubtlessly vary from country to country (and have changed over the years as well), these numbers provide at least an indication of new title production. 2. The Bowker report (https​:/​/ww​​w​.pro​​quest​​.com/​​about​​/news​​/2014​​/Trad​​ition​​ al​-Pr​​int​-B​​ook​-P​​roduc​​tion-​​Dippe​​d​-Sli​​ghtly​​-in​-2​​​013​-S​​ays​-B​​owker​​.html​. Accessed November 22, 2019) distinguishes traditional publishing from the non-traditional sector “comprised primarily of reprint houses specializing in public domain works and by presses catering to self-publishers and ‘micro-niche’ publications. Their titles are marketed almost exclusively on the web and printed on-demand.” 3. Esther Allen provides a detailed analysis of the “state” of translation in the introduction of the PEN/IRL report on literary translation, To Be Translated or Not to Be. 4. In 1999, Heilbron reports an only slightly higher figure: since 1945 the percentage of translations of all published books in the United Kingdom and the United States has remained stable at less than 5 percent (439). 5. This percentage is confirmed for the United Kingdom in a study from Literature Across Frontiers in 2015, although it also revealed that translation grew by 53 percent between 1990 and 2012, and literary translation by 66 percent, thus keeping up with book production overall (https​:/​/ww​​w​.lit​​-acro​​ss​-fr​​ontie​​rs​.or​​g​/new​​-tran​​ slati​​on​-st​​atist​​​ics​-f​​rom​-l​​af/. Accessed November 22, 2019). 6. “la production éditoriale française est en bonne place.” 7. Both Sapiro and Allen provide lower numbers for French translations into English, though neither contests the lead of French translations among foreign literature in the United Kingdom and the United States. (For detailed information, see also Sapiro, “Translatio” 73–76.) Sapiro estimates the number of French literary translations between 1990 and 2003 in the United States at roughly one fifth of all translations (“Les échanges littéraires” 10). Allen reports that, according to the Center for Book Culture, 15 percent (fifty-two works) of total translated fiction in the United States between 2000 and 2006 consisted of French literary fiction (20–21). Since the above data do not always meet comparable criteria for inclusion they serve rather as indications from different sources confirming a similar trend.

56

Chapter 1

8. See Rapport d’Activité 2017 published by the Centre National du Livre, https​ :/​/ww​​w​.cen​​trena​​tiona​​lduli​​vre​.f​​r​/fic​​hier/​​p​_res​​sourc​​e​/181​​82​/re​​ssour​​ce​_fi​​chier​​_fr​_​2​​017​ .r​​a​.du.​​cnl​.p​​df. Accessed January 27, 2020. 9. According to David Bellos, “English is the medium as source or target of 75.12 % of all translation acts” (210). Russian used to be one of the central languages but lost this position in the 1990s, presumably due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and its diminished power as a political world force (Heilbron 434). 10. Alarm in the face of this imbalance has been expressed by numerous critics and scholars. For instance, Edith Grossman describes “the embarrassingly low percentage of translations in the English-speaking world” as a “new kind of iron curtain” partly due, she suggests, to a high degree of xenophobia (29). Likewise, in an article on the dearth of translated Arab pop culture in English, Deborah Cameron connects the asymmetry in translation volumes to the American economic and political dominance, adding that it is “America’s own isolationism of the mind that presents the greater danger” (218). 11. In fact, “marginal” is often attributed a positive assessment in contemporary cultural theory, as it is “being seen less as a site of social exclusion or deprivation than as a locus of resistance to socially imposed standards and coercive norms” (Huggan, The Postcolonial Exotic 20). 12. Prasad refers to the situation of the bilingual Indian English writer—himself a “translated” man, to speak with Rushdie—as the creator of a “pollinated and enriched language (and culture) that results from the act of translation” (41). Similar statements have been made about the writing by African and Caribbean authors expressing themselves in French. 13. Ojo refers to Ferdinand Oyono’s Une Vie de boy (Houseboy) where the narrator explains in the introduction that he has translated Toundi’s journal from ewondo, an African language spoken by the Kolo-Beti in Cameroon. 14. On the topic of linguistic innovation in francophone African literature, see Batchelor’s Decolonizing Translation. 15. The French Publishers’ Agency represents English language rights (in the United States and the United Kingdom) of an important selection of French books. An additional source of subsidies for French books translated into any other language is the Centre National du Livre, part of the French Ministry of Culture. 16. “une catégorie utilisée au sein des milieux éditoriaux britanniques pour désigner une certaine représentation qu’ils se font de la littérature française et du capital symbolique national qu’elle véhicule.” 17. A similar criticism has been voiced by American editors, as reported by François Cusset director of the Bureau du livre français in New York in 1998 (Vantroys 46–47). Likewise, a few years later, in “La pensée tiède. Un regard critique sur la culture française,” Perry Anderson expounds his views on the decline of France as a political, intellectual and cultural power on the world stage as a result of increasing neoliberalism and predominance of the English language. Pierre Nora refutes this assessment in his response to Anderson, “La pensée réchauffée” (Anderson and Nora). Furthermore, see Donald Morrison’s statements below as well as more recent developments.

Francophone African Narratives

57

18. However, the broader recognition of francophone (non-hexagonal) writers in US academia and the relative lack thereof—until the 2000s, as will be illustrated—in France have frequently been linked to France’s amnesia concerning its colonial past. For instance, in her essay “Le Centre dans les marges,” Carla Calargé attributes US endorsement of francophone authors to a number of factors, among them US neutrality regarding France’s colonial past, at least until independence (7). On this topic, see also Bancel et al., La République coloniale. 19. Morrison’s book The Death of French Culture (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010) includes an expanded and more conciliatory version of his Time essay that he originally titled In Search of Lost Time. The volume also contains Antoine Compagnon’s response The Trappings of French Greatness (originally published in French as Le Souci de la grandeur.) 20. Morrison emphasizes that France’s “return” on the global culture scene will not exclusively take the shape of high culture, to which we were traditionally accustomed; new energy will be infused from the margins, such as the world of fashion, cuisine and winemaking (33). 21. In fact, an important body of French/francophone literature is produced by (second-generation) immigrants, migrant writers, beurs, including emigrated subSaharan Africans, a number of whom meet the criteria for inclusion in our corpus under scrutiny. Odile Cazenave’s volume Afrique sur Seine. A New Generation of African Writers in Paris explores the literature published since the 1980s by African emigrants living in France. 22. Due to diverging corpus boundary definitions the total number of francophone sub-Saharan texts in Sapiro’s corpus amounts to seventeen (2 percent) while our corpus contains twenty-three narratives for that same period. 23. These include two or more translations of the following works: two translations of René Maran’s Batouala’s first version (original—Paris: Albin Michel, 1921; translations: New York, Thomas Seltzer Inc.,1922, translated by Adele Szold Seltzer; London: Jonathan Cape, 1922, translated by unknown) and one of its second version (original—Paris: Albin Michel,1938; translation—Washington: Black Orpheus Press, 1972, translated by Barbara Beck and Alexandre Mboukou); two translations of Ahmadou Kourouma’s En attendant le Vote des bêtes sauvages (Editions du Seuil, 1998), translated as Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals (University of Virginia Press, 2001) by Carrol F. Coates, then as Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Beasts (Heinemann Educational Books, 2003) in a translation by Frank Wynne; finally, Amadou Hampaté Bâ’s Kaïdara (Julliard, 1968) was first translated under the original title by Daniel Whitman (Washington: Three Continents Press) in 1988; then in 2012, as Kaydara by Priye Iyalla and Elechi Amadi (Ibadan, Nigeria: HEBN Publishers Plc). 24. For a more detailed description of the francophone sub-Saharan editorial landscape, see Schulz (241–44) as well as Ducournau (La Fabrique 98–101). 25. In 1990, 49 percent of total African literature (percentage provided by Françoise Cévaër) was produced in France, increasing to 52 percent in 2010 (percentage provided by Virginie Coulon). Until 2010, the most productive African countries in percentage of literature production were Cameroon (10 percent), Zaïre/DRC (9

58

Chapter 1

percent), Ivory Coast (7 percent), and Senegal (6 percent). All except Ivory Coast show a decline since 1990 (Ducournau, La Fabrique 93). 26. For instance, the UNESCO Institute of Statistics reports literacy rates as high as 85 percent (2016) for the Democratic Republic of Congo, but as low as 31 percent for Chad (2016) and 36 percent (2010) for the Central African Republic (https://tellmaps​.com​/uis​/literacy/#!​/tellmap/​-601865091. Web. Accessed October 28, 2019). 27. “lieu naturel d’expression.” 28. Regarding Mongo Beti’s relationship with the leadership in his native country, Claire Dehon informs us, “since he [Mongo Beti] opposed the Ahmadou Ahidjo government and no longer seemed to support Paul Biya’s, not a single African publishing house is prepared to publish his work for fear of being banned from an African country.” (44) (“Comme il [Mongo Beti] s’opposait au gouvernement d’Ahmadou Ahidjo et que celui de Paul Biya ne semble plus recevoir ses suffrages, aucune maison africaine ne veut le publier de peur de se voir interdire dans l’un ou l’autre pays africain.”) The Guinean-born author Tierno Monénembo contends that the real problem in Africa is “the lack of freedom in countries where certain leaders think of themselves as gods” (“le manque de liberté dans des pays où certains gouvernants se prennent pour des dieux”) (Schifano 42). 29. This description is used by Thompson (Merchants 17). 30. “Lorsque les écrivains sont marginalisés à Paris, ils sont marginalisés dans le monde entier.” 31. These terms are used by Mouralis (République 22–24). Calargé discusses this subject in her article, referring also to Bancel et al., La République coloniale (9). 32. See Mouralis (République 16–17) and Calargé (10) for more details on this topic. Philippe Braud contributes to the discussion in “Le traumatisme colonial” (411–12) in which he presents the biased position of the academy vis-à-vis certain sensitive research subjects, such as the betrayal of the Republican ideals during the period of French imperialism. 33. Only the first editions are considered; unpublished thesis translations have not been included in this study. Although data reflect research up to and including 2017, the French publications since 2015 have not been included since the time lag for their translation is extremely short. 34. For more details on this topic, see Julien Hage’s “Les littératures francophones d’Afrique noire à la conquête de l’édition française (1914-1974).” 35. In 1962, 7 percent of French publishing houses whose turnover exceeded 1.5 million euros were responsible for fifty-five percent of total turnover in publishing; in 2002, 9 percent of presses with a turnover of more than 15 million euros earned 71 percent of the market turnover (Rouet 27). 36. Hachette Livre is also the third largest trade and educational publisher worldwide, and a subsidiary of Lagardère Group, a multimedia conglomerate. For a detailed description of the three cycles of concentration since the late 1950s, see Rouet, chapter 2, “L’affirmation interrompue d’un duopole” (31–60). 37. “Entre les deux grands groupes et les toutes petites maisons [. . .] l’édition a été longtemps le domaine privilégié des maisons de taille intermédiaire et des éditeurs moyens, détenteurs du prestige et dépositaires de la tradition éditoriale, dans

Francophone African Narratives

59

des structures au contrôle largement familial.” Although these “midsizers” continue to benefit from a certain degree of freedom to select and publish works, a significant operating deficit will lead to an intervention by the group’s management or the demand of a set rate of profitability (Rouet 90). Crucial for the survival of this influential category of medium-sized publishers has been their control over dissemination and distribution channels as well as their development of paperbacks. 38. Within the French editorial landscape, the total number of very small publishers (“entreprises d’édition”) increased from 801 in 1971—particularly the 1970s saw an enormous boom—to 3,760 in 2005 (Rouet 98–99; numbers are provided by the INSEE, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies). 39. Named after the journal created in 1947, Présence Africaine was the first specialized publishing house founded in Paris by an African, Alioune Diop, in 1949. It aimed at establishing a dialogue between the West and Africa, at a reevaluation of the African cultural legacy and the introduction of a specific sub-Saharan (“négro-africain”) literary and theoretical discourse (Kadima-Nzuji 13). For a detailed analysis of Présence Africaine’s catalogue and legacy, see Frioux-Salgas, “Présence Africaine” and Bush, chapter 2 “Book-publishing at Présence Africaine” in Publishing Africa. The second press, Les Editions L’Harmattan, was established in 1975 and specializes in “Third World,” African and Caribbean fiction and nonfiction, including scholarly texts. Les Editions des Peuples Noirs (created by Mongo Beti in the early 1970s), les Editions Maisonneuve et Larose (1961), les Editions Publisud (1981), and Vents d’ailleurs (1999) all published one or two of the corpus narratives. 40. These three texts are Sous l’Orage (1954) (Caught in the Storm) by Seydou Badian, Ville cruelle (1954) (Cruel City) by Mongo Beti (Eza Boto) and Un Nègre à Paris (1959) (An African in Paris) by Bernard Dadié. 41. For a more detailed description of the 1950s zeitgeist, I refer to Steemers, Le (néo)colonialisme littéraire 27–38. 42. “Si tu connais un autre écrivain africain, amène-le-moi.” When Mongo Beti published this second novel with Laffont in 1956, no mention whatsoever was made by the publisher nor by critics of his first narrative Ville cruelle (1954) that came out under the pseudonym Eza Boto with Présence Africaine. Dissatisfied with the latter’s publication process, Mongo Beti turned to “mainstreamers” such as Laffont, hoping that their marketing department would allow his second novel to reach a wider readership. For a detailed account of the reception of Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba, see Steemers, Le (néo)colonialisme littéraire 89–130. 43. For a more detailed description of the 1960s zeitgeist, see Steemers, Le (néo) colonialisme littéraire 133–40. 44. Bush observes that during the 1945–1967 period “the great majority of publishers presented by [her] bibliographical work only published one or two titles, suggesting a low level of specialization in ‘African literature’ as a category in this period” (11). For a total of 593 titles, the five most common publishing institutions on a list of 162, she states, are Présence Africaine, Editions CLE, Seghers, P. J. Oswald, and Le Seuil. 45. “Lorsqu’un livre réussit, il passe obligatoirement en France !” 46. “peut–être le premier roman africain digne de ce nom.”

60

Chapter 1

47. This unfortunate affair has been extensively analyzed by scholars and critics. See for instance Christopher Wise, Yambo Ouologuem: Postcolonial Writer, Islamic Militant. 48. Previously, Bourdieu had described Le Seuil’s position within the publishing (sub)field as “neutral.” Similar to Gallimard, Le Seuil combines the establishment of a solid backlist of “longsellers,” that is, intellectual bestsellers, with the short-term production of commercial bestsellers (“La production” 25). 49. The current study fails to provide sufficient data confirming that inclusion of African writing in general literature series—such as Le Seuil’s “cadre rouge”— increases its visibility among anglophone publishers. 50. The exceptions are C’était à Tigony (As She Was Discovering Tigony) by Olympe Bhêly-Quenum, simultaneously published by Nouvelles Editions Ivoiriennes in Abidjan and by Présence Africaine in Paris in 2000; and La Mémoire amputée (The Amputated Memory) by Werewere Liking, published in 2004 by Nouvelles Editions Ivoiriennes. The latter was founded in 1992 after the dissolution of Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines. 51. For instance, the authors Mandé Alpha Diarra (69), Simon Njami (136), and Jean-Baptiste Tiemele (148) express their reservations regarding Présence Africaine in their interview with Cévaër. 52. “Nous avons une vocation purement culturelle et africaine, et non pas commerciale ; ce qui d’ailleurs aujourd’hui nous pose un certain nombre de problèmes.” 53. “passage obligé de tout Africain désireux d’être publié en France.” 54. In a 2015 article, provokingly entitled “L’Harmattan, la maison d’édition qui ne paie pas ses auteurs” (“L’Harmattan, the publishing house that does not pay its authors”), Raoul Mbog reported a turnover of 8.5 million euros in 2014. The publishing contract stipulates an author compensation of 4 percent as from the 501st sold copy and 6 percent as from the 1001st, which, according to professionals in the field, is an unorthodox practice. Allegedly, L’Harmattan follows the ruling of November 12, 2014, on the subject of intellectual property with respect to publishing contracts (Mbog). 55. “ce qui dérange les autres, c’est que nous avons une méthodologie innovante qui permet de faire exister des livres.” 56. Over a period of thirty years, Albin Michel, Stock, and Actes Sud each contributed three corpus narratives; Grasset, Union Générale d’Editions, and J-C Lattès each two, while the rest of mainstream publishers accounted for not more than one narrative in our corpus. 57. “aucun éditeur français généraliste ne publie son ‘premier’ auteur africain entre 1962 et 1994, ce qui témoigne d’un désintérêt relatif pendant plus de trente ans.” 58. For a detailed description, see chapter 1 of Ducournau’s La Fabrique. 59. Besides L’Harmattan, described above, Ducournau mentions among the most successful ones Akpagnon (founded in 1978 in Paris but relocated to Togo), Karthala and Silex (established in 1980), Dapper and Sépia (founded in 1986) as well as Hatier’s series “Monde noir poche” created by Jacques Chevrier in 1980. Hatier succeeds, even before independence, in establishing an important network on the African textbook market and uses its literary collection, that includes translations

Francophone African Narratives

61

from anglophone African authors, to tighten its stranglehold on the educational market segment (Ducournau, La Fabrique 138–43). 60. For instance, in 2000 Gallimard’s Jean-Noël Schifano creates the series “Continents noirs” (Black continents), with its “triple identity”: local, universal, and singular (http:​/​/www​​.gall​​imard​​.fr​/D​​ivers​​/Plus​​-sur-​​la​-co​​llect​​ion​/C​​onti​n​​ents-​​Noirs​ /(sourcenode)/116076. Accessed October 30, 2019). Bernard Magnier, editor for the mainstream publisher Actes Sud, inaugurates the series “Afriques” in 1995 and “Lettres africaines” in 1997. 61. “sans que la littérature africaine n’en devienne ‘à la mode,’ il [le retournement] la rend ‘en tout cas plus visible.’” 62. “Pourquoi depuis environ cinq ans, l’Afrique est-elle devenue un sujet d’édition ?” See also Kossi Efoui’s article “Le boom des écrivains africains.” 63. “Il souffle sur l’édition française [un] vent d’Afrique.” 64. This observation does not presume that no writers from “the southern hemisphere” appreciate being represented in Gallimard’s “Continents noirs” collection. Ananda Devi, for instance, sees it as a “form of legitimation” for non-hexagonal writers who start out with a “definite handicap.” She is one of the authors who corroborates in an interview with Julia Waters in 2013 that “[p]ublishing with Seuil [sic], Grasset or Gallimard represented a kind of recognition that’s in a completely different league from publishing with Harmattan or even Dapper” (119). 65. The very successful mainstream publisher Actes Sud, founded in 1977 by Hubert Nyssen in Arles (one of the few presses located outside Paris) ranked tenth among French publishers (according to turnover) in 2018 (Piault, “Classement 2018” 22). Le Serpent à Plumes, established by Pierre Astier in 1993, features a large collection of foreign literature. This press that integrated bestselling titles in its paperback series “Motifs” has been taken over several times since 2000 (http:​//​www​​.bibl​​iomon​​ de​.co​​m​/edi​​teur/​​serpe​​nt​-pl​​ume​-l​​​e​-129​​.html​. Accessed October 30, 2019). Philippe Rey is a small mainstream press established in 2002 (http:​/​/www​​.phil​​ippe-​​rey​.f​​r​/une​​ page-​​equip​​e​-mai​​son​-1​​​-1​-0-​​1​.htm​​l. Web. Accessed February 7, 2020). 66. Les Editions Gallimard, established by Gaston Gallimard in 1911, is part of the group Madrigall, led by Antoine Gallimard, grandson of the founder. Comprising fifteen publishers and nine bookstores and subsidiaries, its catalogue displays some 8,900 authors and 240 literary and essayistic series (www​.gallimard​.fr. Accessed October 30, 2019). 67. Besides the two laureats mentioned above, Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah n’est pas obligé (Allah Is Not Obliged) was awarded the Renaudot prize in 2000 and Tierno Monénembo’s Le Roi de Kahel (The King of Kahel) in 2008. 68. In a similar vein, as a result of geopolitical upheavels in North Africa and the Middle East in the 2000s, Sabo remarks on the introduction of the migrant novel into mainstream publishing: “Contemporary novels accordingly abound in precarious figures: refugees, asylum seekers, sans-papiers, migrant workers, stowaways, sex workers, and victims of forced labor” (24). 69. Laferrière is the second black académicien since Léopold Sédar Senghor who was welcomed as an “immortal” in 1983. Although no African authors have been elected into the Académie Française since Senghor, several foreign-born writers have

62

Chapter 1

become “immortals,” such as the Chinese-born François Cheng in 2002, the Lebanese author Amin Malouf in 2011, and the Russian-born Andreï Makine in 2016. 70. In the same year, the volume Pour une littérature-monde en français (Paris, Gallimard), edited by Michel Le Bris et Jean Rouaud, was published. Many of the signatories contributed to this publication, which was followed in 2010 by Je est un autre. Pour une identité-monde (Paris, Gallimard), compiled by the same editors as the 2007 volume. 71. “Une page est tournée, la ‘mémoire coloniale’ investit de toute part la société française. Le surgissement, récent mais intense, de ces mémoires de la colonisation est une occasion de s’interroger sur ce que l’on appelle ‘la mémoire coloniale.’” 72. This article was repealed at the beginning of 2006. 73. The party changed its name from Front National to Rassemblement National in 2018. 74. For a detailed analysis of the reception of Camara Laye’s The Dark Child/The African Child and Mongo Beti’s The Poor Christ of Bomba, see Steemers, Le (néo) colonialisme littéraire, chapters 1 and 2, respectively. 75. Ville cruelle was included in this volume, together with Coeur d’Aryenne by Jean Malonga and Nini by Abdoulaye Sadji. In 1971, Présence Africaine published a new edition of the Cameroonian’s first novel under its title Ville cruelle.

Chapter 2

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

An understanding of the Anglo-American publishing field is required in order to contextualize the position of translated literature within this immense market that lacks a natural appetite for translated material. In Merchants of Culture, Thompson seeks to fathom the potential logic of this industry that churned out more than 50,000 fiction titles in the United States alone in 2013, thus dominating the international arena of trade publishing. One of the factors that shaped this sector is the emergence of large publishing corporations.1 Thompson identifies a “synergy” phase beginning in the 1960s during which large corporations active in industries such as information, entertainment, and education acquired previously independent publishing houses. A second phase of mergers and acquisitions followed in the early 1980s, when, as a result of intensified competition and driven by a need of capital, many independent publishers saw no other viable solution for survival but to sell to a large corporation. These acquisitions also solved their growth conundrum, that is, selling more books each year in a basically static market. At the same time, it proved an effective method to extend the markets for some European media conglomerates desiring to get a foothold in Anglo-American publishing (Thompson, Merchants 100–45).2 One of the key questions that these large publishing corporations faced and still face is “how to reconcile the economies that can be achieved through greater scale and rationalization with the creative editorial work upon which the future success of the corporation ultimately depends” (Thompson, Merchants 125). In fact, the chances of success are greatest with the creation of small editorial teams representing imprints that are organized in divisions, but that operate autonomously only to a certain degree while adhering to predetermined financial parameters. In other words, editors are expected to complete a Profits and Loss Sheet for each book they buy—mostly done backward since acquisition is often 63

64

Chapter 2

based on intuition—but budgets need to be balanced. Clearly defending the status quo of large publishing corporations, Thompson is eager to dispel several myths about these enterprises, of which two will be mentioned here: “Myth 1: The corporations have no interest in publishing quality books. All they are interested in is commercial bestsellers” (Merchants 139). Although Thompson does not deny large corporations’ interest in commercial bestsellers, he argues that they are also looking to produce quality literary fiction and serious nonfiction, however elusive their definition of these categories may be. Another fable the author aims to discard is: “The corporations don’t experiment with new authors. They’re only interested in publishing established authors who write books according to tried and tested formulas” (141). On the contrary, Thompson argues, they are always looking for new talents and new books by first-time authors “when they think they have the potential to sell well” (142; emphasis added). In spite of Thompson’s attempts to dissipate misconceptions concerning these corporations’ priorities, the books they sell need to pay off or, even better, attain bestseller status. It is worthwhile contrasting Thompson’s judgment with a very different view on the development of the global book industry, expressed by André Schiffrin, who began his career in publishing in 1962 with Pantheon Books that was later acquired by Random House. Resold several times over the years, the latter is currently an imprint of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, part of Bertelsmann AG. Schiffrin deplored Random House’s policy prescribing that each title be profitable in itself; compensation of one book’s loss by another’s profit was no longer acceptable (54). Allegedly, selecting books to be published would no longer be part of the editor’s task but of a publishing board where the opinions of finance and marketing specialists dominate. Contradicting Thompson quoted above, Schiffrin contends these publishing boards search a known author or a successful theme: “It is difficult for new talents or original and critical viewpoints to find their place in the large publishing houses” (64).3 As part of an industry that globalized at an alarmingly high rate, mergers and acquisitions have not spared the French publishing field either. In 1999, Bourdieu bemoaned the abruptness of structural changes that had swept through the French publishing field during the previous two decades; an uncompromising financial logic now reigned in a relatively protected sector, he contended at the time. This “logic” seems to have rooted itself only more firmly within the French publishing field since the turn of the millennium. With some delay, it adopted the American (entertainment) model where market imperatives replaced editorial policies, regretted Bourdieu (“Une revolution” 21–22).4 More than two decades previously, he had described the two editorial modes of functioning within the publishing field, which today have become all but obsolete. On the one hand, Bourdieu argued, dominates the

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

65

sphere of large-scale production as described by Thompson with its market imperatives of acquisitions and mergers, including control of the distribution chain, and its logic of short-term profitability via the indispensable quest for potential “big books.” On the opposite side of the spectrum, Bourdieu identified the sphere of small-scale production representing an idealistic and intellectual editorial approach aiming at the accumulation of long-term symbolic capital, also known as longsellers or intellectual bestsellers.5 Yet, this opposition could no longer be captured in such Manichean terms, Bourdieu himself acknowledged roughly a decade and a half later: “the boundary has never been as blurred between the experimental work and the bestseller” (The Rules of Art, Postscript 347).6 Hence, the strict division between the two editorial worlds and the products they seek to publish has become to a great extent artificial. For instance, even though backlist publishing is a long and laborious process, large-scale publishers will not shun away from publishing a potential intellectual bestseller that has a chance of becoming part of a money-making backlist, ultimately more profitable than frontlist publishing.7 Its revenue is relatively predictable and, except for the printing, no new investments are required: “It is the closest thing there is in publishing to printing your own money,” quips Thompson (Merchants 219). It is precisely the phenomenon of the “literary bestseller” (or intellectual bestseller) that appears to epitomize a new state in publishing in recent years, argues Marie-Pierre Pouly. Instead of the usual long-term consecration involved, this type of bestseller gains recognition rapidly via, for instance, endorsement by canonic writers, the citation of excerpts in prestigious academic reviews and swift inclusion in secondary school or academic syllabi. In the case of such a “two-sided cultural product” (Pouly 20), prestige in the guise of virtually instantaneous recognition by the literary and academic establishment—and, therefore, short-term commercial success—is combined with potential profitability, thus accumulating both symbolic and economic capital.8 Notwithstanding the correlation between the two editorial spaces—the Anglo-American and the French—major discrepancies remain, in addition to geographical specificities. In her study on the literary exchanges between Paris and New York, two capitals of the “World Republic of Letters,” Sapiro describes some of the main contrasts between these two publishing fields. First, in the United States, a legal distinction must be made between for-profit/trade and nonprofit publishers, corresponding broadly to a pole of large-scale circulation versus a pole of small-scale circulation, although again the boundaries of this segmentation are relatively porous. Despite the absence of this distinction in France, French publishers can request subsidies from the Centre National du Livre as well as financial support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, though this remains reserved for the translation and promotion of upmarket literature (Sapiro, “Les échanges littéraires” 20).

66

Chapter 2

Small nonprofits in the United States, on the other hand, receive grants from foundations, trusts, and individuals that can comprise up to half to two-thirds of their income. Moreover, since for these tax-exempt not-for-profit organizations—such as Soft Skull Press in Berkeley,9 Archipelago Books in Brooklyn or Deep Vellum Publishing in Dallas—commercial success is generally not a primary concern, these presses enjoy more latitude to invest in avantgarde and less mainstream literature (Thompson, Merchants 155–60).10 Jill Schoolman, founder of Archipelago Books, corroborates that the nonprofit structure allows the publisher to take more risks than for-profit, but keeping an independent press afloat, she reminds us, is nonetheless “a Sisyphean struggle.” Similarly, in Britain, the shrinking budget, since 2000, of the semi-governmental Arts Council England has affected the small independent British publishers in their endeavor to publish translated literature (Frisani 114). These small presses have nevertheless strengthened their position since the creation in 2005 of the Independent Alliance, a global partnership of UK publishers with a similar editorial vision, aiming at reducing costs by means of collective representation, points of sales, and promotion. Additionally, the role of literary agents is quite distinct in English and French-language trade publishing. A phenomenon that first appeared in the United Kingdom at the end of the nineteenth century, the literary agent emerged in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth, exploding in the 1980s and 1990s. Thompson views the author’s representation by a literary agent as indispensable: a long-term literary career requires professional management by agents who are not only considered the discoverers of talent but also “first editors” (Merchants 58–99). Authors will also benefit greatly from working with a good agent able to pitch their work to a global network of contacts. However, authors in France were traditionally represented by their publisher, responsible for selling their rights. This dynamic has only begun to change very recently since literary agents were considered by some as “a bit dirty” (Snaije, “L’Autre Agence”).11 During a conference in Toulouse (France) on the subject of “Literary agents and copyright management in France” in November 2015 it became clear that “France is probably the only Western country where the figure of the literary agent is rare” (Pontas). This would imply that most authors either sell all rights—original language rights as well as translation and audiovisual rights—to their French publisher or they negotiate their own contracts. At the conference, it was suggested that authors team up to create a company capable of handling their rights for less high commissions than those taken by their French publishing houses.12 This proposition, if carried out adequately, could prevent situations as described below by James Currey, editor from 1967 to 1983 of the African Writers Series published by Heinemann Educational Books—a publisher that played an essential role in the dissemination of translated

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

67

francophone sub-Saharan narratives. Corresponding directly with Currey, the Cameroonian author Mongo Beti expressed his suspicion that he was not receiving due royalties from the publishers Heinemann, Laffont, and Buchet Chastel. Currey reported: On 13 January 1975 I explained [to Mongo Beti]: “The difficulty is that there are so many people along the line, all of whom have some share in the proceeds.” On 16 May 1975 I listed for Guy Buchet “the exact print numbers of the ten impressions of Mission to Kala [one of Mongo Beti’s early novels] between 1964 and 1974, totaling 80,000 copies.” (62)

These sales numbers astonished Mongo Beti greatly. The Cameroonian writer’s situation was all the more complex since he published his work with a large number of different French publishing houses, such as Présence Africaine, Laffont, Buchet Chastel in the 1950s, as well as Union des Peuples Noirs (created by the writer himself), Union générale d’éditions, Julliard and Maspéro in the 1970s. However, the illegal rights sale in 1969 of his 1956 novel Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba by Laffont to Krauss Reprint caused the Cameroonian the greatest harm (Steemers, Le (néo)colonialisme 101). In this case, a competent literary agent solely safeguarding the writer’s interests might have prevented any abuses and financial complications. PUBLISHERS OF THE ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE CORPUS NARRATIVES Let us take a closer look at publishing houses in the United States and the United Kingdom that did in fact disseminate the first edition of the translated narratives by the francophone sub-Saharan authors represented in our corpus. Analogous to the inquiry into the original publications presented in chapter 1, a distinction has been made between various categories of Anglo-American publishers: midsize/larger mainstream corporations, or imprints absorbed by these corporations, in the United States (such as Farrar Straus and Giroux; Macmillan Publishers Ltd.) or the United Kingdom (e.g., William Collins and Sons/Collins which after a merger with US publisher Harper and Row became the imprint HarperCollins; Longman, acquired by the global publisher Pearson); small, mostly independent, frequently nonprofit presses that may specialize in “third-world,” translated or African literature, in the United States (for instance, Archipelago Books, Deep Vellum Publishing, Soft Skull Press) or in the United Kingdom (such as Arcadia Books, Ayebia Clarke Publishing, and Serpent’s Tail); the well-known Heinemann Educational Books and its African Writers Series; and finally, a section of a small number

68

Chapter 2

of corpus narratives published outside the United States and the United Kingdom (such as New Horn Press in Ibadan, Nigeria in the 1980s; Seagull Books, launched in India in 1982 and Mawenzi House Publishers, based in Toronto since the 1980s). Categorization is based on the status of the publisher at the time of publication. For instance, Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure was first published in 1963 by Walker Publishing Company in New York, at the time a small independent press mainly producing nonfiction. Though Walker was acquired by Bloomsburg in 2004 Ambiguous Adventure is part of the category of “small presses” since it indicates the status of the press at the time of publication. The total number of translations add up to 132 to reflect the double and triple publications of the same original French title by (different types of) anglophone publishers in the same year.13 Figure 2.1 illustrates the percentage of corpus translations issued per publisher category, revealing that between 1921 and 2017, the largest overall contribution to our corpus (37 percent) came, not surprisingly, from

Figure 2.1  Overall Contribution per Publisher Category of (132) English Translations/ Editions of Corpus Narratives (1921–2017).

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

69

small publishers, 21 percent from the United States and 16 percent from the United Kingdom. Almost one-fifth of all translations of our corpus narratives was published by Heinemann Educational Books in the African Writers Series (19 percent)—this percentage rises when second and third English editions are taken into account. University presses in the United States were responsible for 23 percent of corpus narratives. These two categories of “educational” publishers together account for 42 percent of corpus translations. Finally, approximately 15 percent is issued by midsize/ larger publishers—7 percent from the United States and 8 percent from the United Kingdom—a percentage that approaches the 16 percent of annual new translated literature in general published by mainstream corporate publishers (Post 2009). However, more compelling than the general data on anglophone publishing are the results displayed in the bar chart in figure 2.2 illustrating the evolution of the dominant publisher categories per decade between 1921 and 2017.

Figure 2.2  Contribution per Decade of Publisher Category of (132) English Translations/Editions of Corpus Narratives (1921–2017).

70

Chapter 2

While no distinct pattern emerges before 1970, Heinemann Educational Books—already the vanguard publisher of African anglophone narratives— began to play a dominant role in the publication of translated francophone sub-Saharan narratives in the 1970s, accounting for 53 percent of translations. In 1978, Heinemann acquired the rights of a ninth translation, Francis Bebey’s The Ashanti Doll—a novel initially published in 1977 in English by the small American press Lawrence Hill Books. These nine narratives appeared in Heinemann’s renowned African Writers Series established in 1962.14 In spite of criticism—for instance, from Wole Soyinka who condemned the series as “the orange ghetto” after the color of its book jackets15—the AWS was crucial for the dissemination of anglophone African literature during its formative years as well as translated francophone African literature, in the West and on the African continent alike. Besides headquarters in London, Heinemann Educational Books16—an autonomous company within William Heinemann since 1961—established regional offices on the African continent, in Nairobi and Ibadan, as well as in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the United States in 1978. Between 1962 and 1984, 270 numbered titles—novels, poetry, drama, and nonfiction—appeared in the series, while some 100 more were published between 1985 and 2003. As Chinua Achebe, who became its editorial adviser, has poignantly noted: “The launching of the Heinemann’s African Writers Series was like the umpire’s signal for which African writers had been waiting on the starting line. In one short generation an immense library of writing had sprung into being from all over the continent” (Home and Exile 51, qtd. in Currey, 1).17 James Currey emphasizes the importance of Heinemann as an educational publisher: “It was the received wisdom in much of British publishing in the early 1960s that the only books that could be sold in Africa were school textbooks. The colonial authorities thought of books for a purpose—the education of a new elite. Books for enjoyment which enhance understanding of other Africans’ ways of love and death were not on their agenda” (2). Currey used the characterization “cynical commercial logic” (4) to describe the situation in which African writers of creative fiction depended on an educational company for the publication of their work, since the series was indeed a great business success. The novels by these young authors were soon prescribed by secondary school examination boards in former British colonies on the African continent, despite controversy regarding the appropriateness of some of these novels’ content for a younger audience. For instance, Mongo Beti’s first three manuscripts The Poor Christ of Bomba, Mission to Kala, and King Lazarus as well as Ferdinand Oyono’s Houseboy all provoked discussion among Heinemann’s editors regarding their suitability as “textbooks” due to their “treatment of sex” (Low 83). Literary arguments seemed to prevail in the end, although, as signaled by Gail Low, decisions to publish certain texts were certainly also taken “in

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

71

the context of the scramble for writers and markets” (83). Intense competition existed among publishers, though not exclusively on the anglophone African publishing market. The narratives by Mongo Beti, Ferdinand Oyono, Ousmane Sembène, and Francis Bebey, originally published in France in the 1950s and 1960s, all became integrated in the African Writers Series by the end of the 1970s. Praising these novels for their originality and elegance, Currey referred to Mongo Beti, Oyono, and Sembène as “the dominating writers, partly because they sold so well in English translation in the AWS” (59; emphasis added). Sembène’s God’s Bits of Wood, published in 1962 in English translation by Doubleday in the United States, appeared in the AWS in Britain in 1970 where it sold over 50,000 copies (Currey 64). Similarly, Mongo Beti’s Mission to Kala sold 80,000 copies between 1964 and 1974 in the AWS after Heinemann acquired the manuscript from Frederick Muller Ltd. in the United Kingdom. The novel “would have disappeared on to library shelves if it had not appeared as AWS 13 in 1964 in the second year of the Series; its sales were to be far greater in English than in French” (Currey 61). Hence, not only did Heinemann launch translated francophone narratives on the anglophone market, the publisher also obtained the rights for a number of them from confreres, thus keeping these titles available for readers, including for an African (educational) market. If numbers of subsequent publishing rights acquisitions are included—that is, if we do not restrict ourselves to the first edition of the English translation—the total sum of corpus narratives published during the 1970s in the AWS amounts to twelve.18 In fact in 2007, Matt Kibble, Development Manager at ProQuest CSA that digitalized the AWS, qualifies the 1970s as the “high-water mark” of the series with around fifteen publications per year. During the following decade, the 1980s, the number of translated corpus narratives more than doubles: while the AWS share drops to 22 percent with seven first English edition translations,19 a “publishing scramble”20 for our corpus narratives seems to occur among both small and midsize/larger trade publishers: 34 percent (11) are published by small presses and 32 percent (9) by midsize publishers. In addition, American university presses publish the first two corpus narratives: the Indiana University Press issues The Madman and the Medusa by Tchicaya U Tam’Si and the University of Virginia Press includes Alioum Fantouré’s Tropical Circle in its CARAF series (Caribbean and African Literature translated from French). Meanwhile, on the African continent, Abiola Irele—an influential promoter of the translation of African francophone literature—founds the publishing house New Horn Press in Ibadan (Nigeria) in the late seventies and eventually issues English translations of four important francophone works, including three corpus narratives: Mongo Beti’s Remember Ruben (1980), Mariama Bâ’s classic So Long a Letter (1981) and The Fortunes of Wrangrin by Amadou Hampaté Bâ

72

Chapter 2

(1987).21 It is also during the eighties that the first African narratives translated from the French and authored by women appear on the Anglo-American book market. The Dakar-based press Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines played an essential role in their (belated) emergence on the African literary scene in the second half of the seventies, issuing five of the first six corpus narratives by African women, including works by Mariama Bâ, Aminata Sow Fall, Ken Bugul, and Nafissatou Diallo. These African female voices found their way into the anglophone book market within a relatively short time span after their original publication, in comparison to those by their male counterparts. Chapter 4 is entirely devoted to the literary production of these early African women writers. The (relative) surge in interest by anglophone agents and agencies in the book market for francophone sub-Saharan narratives in the 1980s coincides with a sharp worldwide growth in book production and translation due to an increasing competition and concentration of the book industry. Coincident with this growing book market we witness the burgeoning popularity in Anglo-American academia of postcolonial studies, non-Western world literature as well as women and gender studies. In particular, francophone non-hexagonal fiction is received favorably by American academia. Since the 1980s, this literature has not only featured prominently within many French departments at American universities, but it is also studied for its social, cultural, and political relevance in departments of English, history or anthropology, as pointed out by Diawara (150). Thus, literary value is conflated with social value. As examples, Diawara mentions Camara Laye’s The Black Child/The African Child studied for its presentation of cultural identity, Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter for her portrayal of women’s issues, and God’s Bits of Wood by Sembène for its Marxist dialectics that oppose African workers and colonial employers. If interest regarding these social, cultural, and political dimensions of (African) novels, especially from the postcolonial studies perspective, may be considered an improvement from the earlier prevalent ethnological emphasis, it is a truism that these texts deserve nonetheless to be acknowledged for their aesthetic sensibility and literary merits.22 Additional factors that may well have played into the budding popularity of francophone (African) literature’s relevance in American academia include US neutrality with respect to France’s colonial past as well as socioeconomic factors, such as the transformation of New York into “the new literary capital,” thus bypassing Paris—as suggested by Casanova in The World Republic of Letters.23 Furthermore, Calargé highlights the importance of an impressive increase in African immigration to the United States that almost tripled between 1990 and 2000 (also bringing numerous African scholars to American academia). In spite of the declining consecrating power of Paris within the “World Republic of Letters” in recent years, the role of

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

73

Parisian publishing in the formation and legitimation of francophone subSaharan literature has nevertheless remained crucial, as has been demonstrated in chapter 1. A plausible explanation for the sharp decline in the numbers of published corpus translations in the 1990s constitutes the economic and political crises in numerous African countries during the second half of the 1980s, given that book production in Africa is more sensitive to economic fluctuations than in the West and, therefore, considerably more irregular (for instance, leading to the closing of Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines in 1988). The steep upward turn discernable again as from 2000 has nevertheless consolidated publishing tendencies until 2017 (figure 2.2). American university presses increase their market share from 30 percent in the 1990s to almost half of total corpus production (49 percent), while small presses evolve from 30 percent in the 1990s to 38 percent by 2017. Between 2010 and 2017, small independent, mostly small nonprofit presses, and US university presses together produce 84 percent of all translated corpus narratives. The AWS is discontinued by Heinemann in 2003, and midsize/larger publishers all but disappear from the market under consideration with a share of less than 1 percent of the production of corpus narratives. PUBLISHERS OF FRENCH TO ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS IN GENERAL The prevalent shifts in publication categories of our corpus narratives since the 1960s are concomitant with developments in the publishing industry in general, as described above: since the 1990s its gradual concentration and market imperatives of short-term profits have almost completely relegated the publication of translated marginal literature to the domain of small independent, mostly nonprofit presses as well as US university presses. Given that translations will rarely develop into “big books” on a foreign market—usually print runs average between 1,500 and 1,600, according to Schoolman of Archipelago Books—these are generally shunned by midsize/larger publishers. From a strictly economical point of view, publishing translated books represents a risk due to the supplementary costs of translation rights, the expense of the translation itself and the difficulty of promoting a foreign writer. These are risks that a small nonprofit structure or a university press is more likely to take on. Supplementary translation costs vary according to the type of book translated: its length and language, its sector—adult or juvenile, literary or other—the status of the publisher—trade, nonprofit or educational—and finally the financing mode, public or private aid, type of contract, and so on. Sapiro estimates the copyright transfer of a hardcover at

74

Chapter 2

approximately 8 percent for a first print run, rising to 10–12.5 percent when sales average between 6,000 to 10,000 copies. Advances for French-language titles in the United States rarely exceed $7,000, and generally amount to $1,000–$2,000, while American literary agents often request $40,000 to $50,000 for American titles (Sapiro, Introduction 27–30). Thus, small-scale anglophone presses unable to afford popular British or American authors can often accrue credibility by buying the finest foreign authors, suggests David Godine, a small independent publisher who in the past has judiciously taken under his wing the 2008 Nobel Prize laureate J. M. G. Le Clézio (Rich C1-8). Hence, whereas anglophone presses commonly impose their conditions of book rights sales on the rest of the world due to the dominant position of English, the situation is mostly reversed with respect to the acquisition of translation rights for French and francophone literature by American presses, since it is largely the small independent and university presses in the United States that undertake these negotiations with influential established publishers such as Gallimard and Le Seuil in France. This observation implies that, generally speaking, two different categories of publishers are involved in this transnational book trade.24 If in the case of our corpus 43 percent of book transactions follow, in fact, this asymmetrical pattern, our study also evinces other noteworthy correlations. For instance, certain small anglophone presses establish a privileged relationship with authors early on in their career and continue to publish the English translation of any subsequent text by those (successful!) authors, regardless of their original publishing house. A case in point is Mabanckou’s oeuvre whose original French texts were issued by a range of different presses—Présence Africaine, Le Seuil, Le Serpent à Plumes, Gallimard—but whose anglophone translation rights were almost exclusively purchased by the two small independent presses, Serpent’s Tail (London, UK) and Soft Skull Press (Berkeley, US). As will be demonstrated in chapter 4, the translator pitching works for translation to a specific anglophone press can also play a determining role in these transnational book deals: Dorothy Blair was instrumental in the publication with Longman (Harlow, UK) of the five corpus narratives she translated from the French (whose translation rights were bought from Stock, Présence Africaine, and Nouvelles Editions Africaines). Returning to the editorial US landscape of French translations in general, Sapiro’s study on the literary exchanges between France and the United States between 1990 and 2003 paints a somewhat different overall picture than the one restricted to francophone sub-Saharan narratives, as described above. The share of the nonprofit sector—in which she includes university presses—has indeed increased to almost one-third of all French translations during the period she analyzes (“Les échanges littéraires” 24). However, comprised in her analysis are retranslations of classics by seventeenth- to

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

75

nineteenth-century French authors that account for one quarter of all translations, as well as new editions of work by deceased twentieth-century authors in the process of becoming classics that make up one-third of all translated titles.25 Thus, a mere 40 percent of all translations represent contemporary French writers, though Sapiro reports a rise in this category since 2003, precisely as a result of the increased activity of small nonprofit presses.26 Her study also underscores that the task of innovating contemporary French literature available in English translation is mostly left to university presses and small nonprofit publishers, such as Dalkey Archive Press and the New Press, an observation that exactly mirrors our conclusion above on the publication of our corpus of francophone sub-Saharan narratives since 1990. THE MISSION OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITY PRESSES As demonstrated above with respect to our corpus narratives, the American academic publishing circuit began to emerge in the 1980s, producing virtually half of the production of sub-Saharan francophone narratives in translation by 2017. These scholarly publishers are “first and foremost educational institutions that are concerned with the development and the transmission of knowledge rather than commercial enterprises” (Thompson, Merchants 181). Nonetheless, many of these academic not-for-profit enterprises (referred to as charities in the United Kingdom) have undergone pressure by their host institutions to become more robust financially and depend less on subsidies and gifts. Adopting a so-called “cross-over” model, academic presses have encroached increasingly on the general trade market. Since the 1980s, sales of scholarly monographs have declined steadily as university presses have been seeking to broaden their general readership by marketing high-quality texts with the right pitch. As confirmed by Schiffrin, in order to boost their revenues university presses endeavored to take over part of the territory abandoned by the big corporations by publishing academic titles for a wider public, as well as resorting to the publication of regional literature, such as history and cook books on the subject of a particular region (85). As a corollary, it would arguably be legitimate to assume that translated African narratives, marketed as international literature or world fiction, would perfectly fit the bill of these scholarly presses targeting an educated readership not exclusively connected to institutions of higher education. In fact, one of the university presses that eventually published eleven corpus narratives, the University of Virginia Press, includes the general readers as a target group it aspires to reach with its special CARAF series, that is, Caribbean and African literature translated from the French.27 Created in the mid-1980s by

76

Chapter 2

James Arnold (editor) and Kandioura Dramé (associate editor), the objectives of the series are described as follows on the website: The CARAF Books series is designed to make available to a public of English speaking [sic] readers the works of contemporary Francophone writers in the Caribbean and Africa that have been heretofore unavailable in English. For students, scholars, and general readers, CARAF offers selected novels, short stories, plays, poetry, and essays that have attracted attention across national boundaries, offering valuable insights into a highly varied group of complex and evolving cultures.28 (emphasis added)

By the end of 2017, CARAF boasts a total of thirty-five titles, mostly novels but also several volumes of poetry and essays: fifteen from the Caribbean, eight from North Africa and twelve from sub-Saharan Africa.29 In the selection process of these translations, university professors as editors played and continue to play an important role, as stated by Sapiro who explains the success of Patrick Chamoiseau’s novel Texaco (1992) in the United States by the American scholars’ enthusiasm for francophone literature: “This success reflects the interest, since the late 1980s, in the production of authors of African and Caribbean origin, an interest in which specialists of francophone literature, more focused as they must be on contemporary production than colleagues of French departments, have played a decisive part” (“Les échanges littéraires” 58).30 The founding editor of the CARAF series and specialist of francophone Caribbean literature, A. James Arnold, confirming the critical influence of university professors in the selection process of francophone titles, explains: In the early years I commissioned the translators and personally reviewed every stage in the preparation of the books for which I had primary responsibility. We intended CARAF Books to be culturally and linguistically reliable; we aimed for a cultivated readership rather than the general public. The authors/titles identified by Prof. Dramé and myself were presented to the board of directors of the University Press, which subjected them to the usual scholarly evaluation. Outside readers were commissioned and their reports submitted to quarterly meetings of the board on which I later served.31

The approach of the current CARAF series co-editors, Mildred Mortimer and Renée Larrier, respectively, professor emeritus and professor, differs in that they do not actively search for titles to be translated but study the proposals that are submitted to them.32 Both the pioneering and the current editors aim in the first place for an educated readership, while Mortimer specifies that the editors target works that will sell, “those texts that will be picked up by

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

77

teachers and scholars for classroom use, and of course, works that will be useful to scholars and hopefully will interest the public at large.”33 When deciding on the subject matter, the CARAF editors seek out “current themes” but also underscore the importance of the quality, both of the work and its translation. Since 2008, the selection of authors of the last five sub-Saharan translations in the CARAF series displays a distinct preference for women writers (four from our corpus and one anthology of women’s poetry edited by Irène Assiba d’Almeida). Indeed, in the complete CARAF series, Caribbean and African women writers are represented with seventeen out of thirty-five titles, making up almost 50 percent of the series.34 On the contrary, among the authors featured by another major contributor to our corpus, the Global African Voices series issued by Indiana University Press, francophone sub-Saharan women authors are totally absent. The series, featuring twelve corpus translations, was established in the early 2000s, and focuses on African authors (not exclusively francophone) and the African diaspora. Among the fifteen texts published until 2017 only two texts translated from the Italian were authored by female writers.35 Returning to the subject of the series mission, the website states: Global African Voices publishes the wealth and richness of literature by African authors and authors of African descent in English translation. The series focuses primarily on translations of new works, but seeks to reissue longstanding classics that are currently out-of-print [sic] or have yet to reach English-speaking readers. Novels, novellas, collections of plays, collections of short stories, collections of folktales, and contemplative essays are considered. Works for translation are selected for their broad appeal to English-speaking readers. They may include, but are not be limited to, works that deal with culture, social and political issues, human rights, ethnic conflict, health care, democratization, immigration, exile, the Diasporic experience, and other salient concerns of the global African community.36 (emphasis added)

Analogous to the University of Virginia Press CARAF series, the website states explicitly that texts are selected “for their broad appeal to Englishspeaking readers,” thus targeting also educated readers outside academic circles. Both series include translations of (relatively) contemporary francophone texts as well as translations of French-language texts originally written thirty to more than fifty years previously, so-called “long-standing classics” that are out of print or untranslated. In 2013, Mongo Beti’s Cruel City— followed by the Cameroonian author’s essay “Romancing Africa”—appeared together in one volume in the Global African Voices series, fifty-nine years after its original publication in France.37 In his introduction to the English edition, the translator Pim Higginson legitimizes this overdue contribution

78

Chapter 2

as “two of the most important works of Francophone African Literature, finally available in English” (viii). The primary relevance of Cruel City is not its inherent literary quality, but its experimental nature: it embodies the inauguration of a canon in French-language African literature. It epitomizes the typical realist, anti-colonial novel that would become especially successful among a certain Western readership in the 1960s and 1970s. This far from flawless first text by one of the great “transgenerational”38 African novelists is translated and issued by a university press almost six decades after its original publication, first and foremost for its academic imprimatur of course adoption.39 Mongo Beti’s article “Romancing Africa” is incorporated in the English-language volume with the same category of academic readership in mind. In this article, the Cameroonian author, as a profoundly committed writer (in the Sartrean sense of “engagé”), attacks in vitriolic terms literary representations of Africa as an irenic society unmarred by colonizers, thereby targeting of course Camara Laye’s L’Enfant noir. Succinctly stated, Higginson summarizes, “both on their own and taken as the beginning of this substantial literary production [by Mongo Beti] ‘Romancing Africa’ and Cruel City represent a pivotal moment for the continent: the first drafts of a Francophone African literary canon” (viii). Nonetheless, it is precisely the canonical value of the corpus narratives in English translation that is often conflated or even eclipsed by its relevance as a social or anthropological document. As mentioned above, the CARAF series selects literary works “offering valuable insights into a highly varied group of complex and evolving cultures,” whereas the mission of the Global African Voices series is to include works “that deal with culture, social and political issues, human rights, ethnic conflict, health care, democratization, immigration, exile, the Diasporic experience, and other salient concerns of the global African community.” Both series emphasize the extra-literary prism through which these texts are studied: the significance of the social, cultural, and political dimensions of their selected works.40 Both the Global African Voices series, by its very name, as well as the CARAF collection publish works “that have attracted attention across national boundaries” (CARAF website). To what extent are some of these francophone sub-Saharan texts then labeled “world literature” and what would be the relevance of this classification with regard to their dissemination channels? David Damrosch defines world literature broadly as “all literary works that circulate beyond their culture of origin, either in translation or in their original language” (4).41 He specifies that it “has often been seen in one or more of three ways: as an established body of classics, as an evolving canon of masterpieces, or as multiple windows

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

79

on the world,” three categories that are not mutually exclusive (15).42 While some corpus narratives belong to a growing list of francophone African classics, most of these texts are first and foremost perceived, in their anglophone context, as “windows on the world”—titles that feature on syllabi of non-French/francophone university departments. Until a few decades ago, these “windows on the world” provided by international literature offered a very limited, largely Euro-American “world view.” Having analyzed several major anthologies of world literature, Damrosch reminds us that it is only in the sixth 1992 edition of The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces that a handful of non-Western authors is added in a supplementary section titled “Contemporary Explorations” (124). NonWestern texts representing marginal literatures are gradually included in a world canon, a body of influential works that, Damrosch emphasizes, constantly shifts both in time and space. No immutable, monolithic canon of world literature ever existed, nor can interpretations or readings of a literary work be reduced to a single one. Furthermore, due to linguistic and cultural transformations a retranslation of a major literary work is desirable approximately every fifty years for it to remain an “active” part of the canon in the sense that it will appeal to a consequential readership. If editorial interest for the work dwindles—whether for ideological or commercial motives—material availability, a sine qua non for an “active” canon, may constitute a problem, “in practice it [the world canon] is experienced as what is available to read, in classrooms and on bookstore shelves, on course syllabi and in anthologies for students and general readers, and questions of scale and of coherence come to the fore in such practical contexts” (Damrosch 111).43 THE AVAILABILITY OF CORPUS NARRATIVES As indicated above, university presses consider it part of their mission to keep paradigmatic texts, potential “longsellers,” in print and available for their (scholarly) readerships. In fact, only seventy-six (64 percent) of the 118 francophone sub-Saharan narratives in English translation included in our corpus were available in print in early 2019, whereas this percentage increases to 85 percent for texts issued by university presses (table 2.1).44 Admittedly, as a category of publishers the latter entered belatedly the editorial landscape of our corpus, which naturally increases the likelihood of print availability: of the sixty titles produced since 2000, fifty-eight (97 percent) are still available in print, while of these fifty-eight titles, forty-one (71 percent) are also

80

Chapter 2

Table 2.1  Number and Percentage of (118) Corpus Narratives Available in English Translation per Publisher Category and According to Format (in 2017) Publisher Category

Format

Heinemann Educational (31 titles) University presses (US) (33 titles) Small presses (UK and US) (34 titles) Midsize/ larger presses (UK and US) (14 titles) Outside UK and US (6 titles)

Available via Open Library

Not Available in Any Format

Available in Print

Available via ProQuest

13 (42%)

10 (32%)

0

8 (26%)

28 (85%)

0

2 (6%)

3 (9%)

23 (68%)

0

1 (3%)

10 (29%)

7 (50%)

0

1 (7%)

6 (43%)

5 (83 %)

0

0

1 (17%)

available in ebook (30) or kindle (11) format that can be ordered instantaneously from many places on the globe.45 It is particularly the introduction of digital editions that has impacted the accessibility of books in general and of our corpus translations in particular. Another opportunity for the longevity of thirty-one corpus translations—not all necessarily first English editions—is provided by Heinemann Educational Books. In recent years, access to the AWS has been restored through its digitization via ProQuest CSA, although Harcourt Education (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), the current publisher of the Heinemann imprint in the United States,46 continues to “distribute the 100 or so contemporary and canonical titles still in print,” specifies Matt Kibble, the Development Manager for ProQuest CSA in 2007. The digitization project has made over 250 of the 359 AWS titles accessible through institutions that purchase or subscribe to the collection.47 Out of the thirty-one AWS titles (that include editions previously published elsewhere) pertaining to our corpus, ten (32 percent) are currently accessible digitally via ProQuest, albeit mostly out of reach of the general public (table 2.1). Does this web diffusion imply that “these works can now come back into circulation and be added to reading lists and syllabuses once more,” as Kibble asserts? Restricted access via subscribed research libraries at least makes this “historically significant material” available for researchers. It is clear from the above that titles issued by educational publishers have a greater chance of survival than those originally produced by non-educational presses. Furthermore, smaller presses seem more committed to keeping older titles available in print (68 percent of corpus narratives still available versus 29 percent not available at all) than midsize/larger publishers (50 percent

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

81

remain in print versus 43 percent not at all). For instance, Camara Laye’s A Dream of Africa (1968) first published by William Collins Sons & Co (London and Glasgow) is neither available in print nor electronically, while Francis Bebey’s Agatha Moudio’s Son (1967), integrated in Heinemann’s AWS, is out of print, yet still available in a digitalized version via ProQuest CSA. On the other hand, canonical novels, such as Mongo Beti’s The Poor Christ of Bomba and Oyono’s The Old Man and the Medal (first published by Heinemann and republished most recently by Waveland Press in respectively 2005 and 2013) have reappeared in new print editions as well as digitally. WORLD, INTERNATIONAL, AND THIRD-WORLD LITERATURE As stated, university presses operating outside the linguistic and cultural boundaries of the original place of book production take responsibility for what they deem paradigmatic texts of the francophone sub-Saharan canon. Although a number of these texts can, according to Damrosch’ definition, be considered part of the category of “world literature,” in such specific, geographically defined university press series such as the Global African Voices or the CARAF series they are not promoted as such. This seems to be rather the explicit mission of small independent (not-for-profit) publishers that specialize in translations, such as Archipelago Books in Brooklyn devoted to publishing “excellent translations of classic and contemporary world literature”48 or Serpent’s Tail in the London (United Kingdom) whose founder’s mission in 1986 was “to introduce British readers to risk-taking world literature no one else in the UK was publishing.”49 Another small publisher, the not-for-profit literary arts organization Deep Vellum Publishing based in Dallas, aims to “connect the world’s greatest untranslated contemporary writers of literature and creative nonfiction with English-language readers [. . .] through original translations.”50 Revealingly, in the 1970s smaller specialized publishing firms that issued some of the corpus narratives committed to what they once qualified as “third-world literature,”51 a term routinely used after World War II for the developing world that is no longer current since the end of the Cold War. Whatever label is embraced to denote this translated literature—world, international or third-world literature—it clearly “denationalizes” the notion of French or francophone literature on the Anglo-American book market. These “denationalized” authors translated from the French or those not identified as such “seem to garner the most interest from publishers, who sometimes go to great lengths, moreover, to conceal the source language,” indicates Sapiro (“French literature” 316–17), who is no doubt referring to the poignant concern of omitting the translator’s name on the cover. This

82

Chapter 2

would corroborate Frisani’s findings regarding the reception of “Frenchness” on the British market (see chapter 1) where, she asserts, translated literature is invisible and absent among “big books,” except for some literature described as “universal,” such as novels by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Muriel Barbery, or Stieg Larson. Indeed, we must distinguish between, on the one hand, the small publishers—whose (core) business it is to issue translations and who tend to underscore the “translatedness” of their work—and, on the other hand, the “multinationals that provide worldwide bestsellers” (Sapiro, “French literature” 318), most of which Damrosch would rank as “global literature” available in airports worldwide. The latter is scarcely represented in our corpus narratives, since few were published by large firms. Besides Camara Laye’s three novels in the 1950s and 1960s and the “scramble” for African texts in the 1980s, only five francophone sub-Saharan narratives have been published by these midsize/larger corporations since the 1990s.52 Not surprisingly, often these works reveal no trace of “translatedness” on their front cover, that is, the translator remains “invisible” (Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility), as in the case of Mudimbe’s text Between Tides (Simon and Schuster, 1991) and two novels by Emmanuel Dongola, Little Boys Come from the Stars (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001) and Johnny Mad Dog (Picador, 2005).53 The latter are both presented as coming-of-age stories about young boys—one is a child soldier—growing up in war-torn postindependence West Africa. Undoubtedly, themes that speak to a relatively broad audience, such as the plight of child soldiers or polygyny, remain in demand by large publishing firms seeking bestsellers. The relevance of the subject matter treated in the selection of translated fiction will be discussed in the following section. SELECTING AND BRANDING FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN TEXTS IN TRANSLATION In the introduction to this study, it was emphasized that the selection and the production of texts to be translated are never innocent acts devoid of meaning, as translation theorists have contended since the 1980s. With the “cultural turn” of translation studies presented in Bassnett and Lefevere’s volume of essays Translation, History and Culture, the object of inquiry becomes the text as part of a network of (source and target) texts, as well as the text’s relationship with extra-textual forces, among them the authorities that are involved in the production and dissemination of a text. Furthermore, as a rewriting a translation not only creates images of a foreign literature and its writers—influencing its canon formation, as we have seen in examples above—but also represents the foreign culture and society, acquiring a

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

83

metonymic function. In order to reach an international reading public, a book needs to possess the appropriate mix of universal appeal and national genius, such as the magical realist novels from South America in the 1980s or Scandinavian melancholy, suggests Parks (2011). Writers seeking to emerge from the strictures of their national literature increase their chances considerably by adhering to the prevalent image of their national culture. While certain texts selected for translation by American university presses reinforce a particular African literary canon, others singled out for translation may amplify a specific discourse answerable to Western expectations or sensibilities. For instance, notably during the 1970s the AWS reflected, according to Venuti, “a distinctively European image of the ‘Third World’ current among left intellectuals during the Cold War” (The Scandals 168). By publishing the anti-colonial works of Mongo Beti, Ferdinand Oyono, and Ousmane Sembène, Heinemann sought to emulate Chinua Achebe’s successful novel Things Fall Apart which it had reprinted in 1962, Venuti argues. The series deliberately aimed at propagating an African literature presenting the anticolonial struggle and the clash of cultures, sought by certain readerships in the West. Indeed, in 1988, Chakava, Managing Director of Heinemann Kenya Ltd. in Nairobi, stated that many young (presumably African) readers considered the AWS as “heavy” and “pre-occupied with the clash of cultures between Africa and the West” (241), a reaction that seems little surprising from a generation of readers born after independence and more partial to contemporary writing. In the case of the anti-colonial novels translated from the French, the cause of this discrepancy lies partly in the time lag—of ten to fifteen years or longer54—between the publication of the French original and the translation, as well as a possible delay in dissemination. In fact, the three translated corpus narratives published by Heinemann in the 1960s should certainly be qualified as “anti-colonial” while in the 1970s the anti-colonial theme dominates in five of the nine corpus narratives included in the AWS. Finally, in 1980s the number of anti-colonial novels in the series is reduced to two out of seven.55 As from the 1970s, some of these writers—such as Malick Fall whose novel The Wound came out in 1973 and Mongo Beti, author of Perpetua and the Habit of Unhappiness in 1978—nonetheless broach new topics in their writing often related to post-independence disillusionment. It can, therefore, be concluded that during the 1960s–1980s, within the AWS, the anti-colonial francophone novel outnumbered by ten to seven the narratives which featured alternative themes prominently. The question is whether this proportion is representative of francophone sub-Saharan narratives in general, or whether the editors of the AWS wittingly skewed their selection in favor of a leftist Western readership that embraced a certain portrayal of sub-Saharan Africa, as is suggested by Venuti. In fact, in her research on the AWS, Gail Low adds fuel to the fire by stating that though the “ideological

84

Chapter 2

project” cannot be read in a simple manner, its danger nevertheless was that it “did not simply publish African writing or ‘represent’ Africa in literary discourse but became synonymous with it” (92). Batchelor corroborates the dominant subject of (anti)colonialism as a theme overshadowing Africans’ existence and, therefore, their emerging “new” literature. Yet she concludes: “Thematic studies of literature by Lilyan Kesteloot, Jacques Chevrier, Pius Ngandu Nkashama and others suggest that the novels selected for translation into English are fairly representative, in thematic terms, of sub-Saharan African literature more generally” (27). The seven theme categories selected by Batchelor within the corpus of African novels that she established in her study provide a fertile avenue for the analysis of the dominant topic in the current study (figure 2.3). While adopting the first five groups of Batchelor’s classification, I have slightly

Figure 2.3  Dominant Theme per Decade of (122) Translations of Corpus Narratives (1921–2017).

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

85

modified the last two to reflect more accurately recent trends in thematic focus.56 Furthermore, it has to be pointed out that if confining each text to a single category seems in certain cases somewhat artificial, the prevailing theme was conclusively selected by considering the presentation of the text to its audience, either by its editors in the paratext or by its critics in their reviews. The first of these not chronologically ordered themes contains a group of novels that focuses on the pre-colonial period, frequently drawing on tradition and mythology, such as Amadou Hampaté Bâ’s Kaïdara (1988) (and its second translation Kaydara, published in 2012). This small body of texts sprinkles the corpus as from the 1980s when production of translations increases substantially. The second, much larger pool of narratives, identified broadly as anti-colonial, has been described in detail above. Most popular in the 1960s and 1970s, the percentage of anti-colonial texts diminished greatly in the 1980s and—as to be expected within a new sociopolitical African context—petered out thereafter. The third category—relegating the anti-colonial element to the background—focuses largely on domestic and individual lives. In these texts, the fate of the protagonists, albeit embedded in and not unaffected by the sociopolitical situation, is determined in the first place by their own attitudes and actions or those of the characters they interact with. For instance, Nafissatou Diallo’s A Dakar Childhood (1982) narrates the story of the author’s childhood in Senegal, and Seydou Badian’s Caught in a Storm (1998) tells the tale of a culture and generation clash of a rural family during French colonial domination. For the important fourth category (22 percent of all narratives) Batchelor has recourse to the term adopted by Jacques Chevrier, “novels of disillusionment,” situated in a disenchanted post-independence African society (which will eventually evolve into the seventh and last tier of narratives). Sony Labou Tansi’s novel The Shameful State (which appeared in an English translation in Indiana University Press’ Global African Voices series in 2016, but had already been published in French in 1981) is part of this cluster as it describes rampant corruption, violence, and degeneration in a fictional African state. Included in this fourth group are also Ahmadou Kourouma’s novels The Suns of Independence and Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals (2001).57 The fifth group of post-independence narratives highlighting the personal and/or domestic constitutes the counterpart of the third category and represents a significant number of emerging women voices, such as Mariama Bâ (So Long a Letter, 1981; Scarlet Song, 1986), Calixthe Beyala (The Sun Hath Looked Upon Me, 1996; Your Name Shall be Tanga, 1996) and Mariama Barry (The Little Peul, 2010). These feminine writings emphasize the plight of women—often trapped between tradition and modernity—in an evolving but still predominantly patriarchal, post-independence society. In their company we also identify several of Mabanckou’s novels

86

Chapter 2

featuring marginal characters presented with linguistic effervescence and exuberant humor (Broken Glass, 2009; Memoirs of a Porcupine, 2011; Black Moses, 2017). Burgeoning in the 1980s, these personal and/or domestic narratives have recently developed into the most important category (30 percent in the 2010s) of translated sub-Saharan texts. This leads us to the question whether Africa is finally being represented and recognized by the anglophone North as more than just “a site of perennial political and humanitarian emergencies” (Adesokan 3)? Are these African stories that could have been situated anywhere in the world finally being translated and disseminated purely for their psychological or human (universal) interest and their representation of inherent literary qualities? We will return to this question. Both the sixth and seventh category of primary thematic focus—as stated, according to the main prevailing theme in its presentation to the reading public—have evolved significantly since Batchelor’s analysis and have been adapted to the most recent literary production. The sixth group “depicting the lives of African emigrants in France or America during the postindependence period” (Batchelor 27) includes all migrant narratives as well as “remigrant” stories of previously emigrated African authors who return, mostly temporarily, to their native soil, such as Tadjo’s Far from my Father (2014) and Mabanckou’s The Lights of Pointe-Noire (2015). This narrative type, although not yet significant in number, emerges in the 1990s, developing particularly during the past decade, a period when the canonization trend of migrant literature establishes itself (Sabo 3). Against the backdrop of recent upheavals and instability in North Africa, the Middle East, and on the South American continent, and the mass migration and humanitarian crises that ensued, the success of migrant novels comes as no surprise. The seventh and last cluster of narratives that were attributed an afterlife in the Anglo-American market since the new millennium focuses on genocide and war as well as political instability, dictatorship, and corruption, circumstances that often evolved from settings as depicted in the post-independence disillusionment novels (category four). Two “popular” sub-themes dominating this category are the story of the child soldier (Dongala’s Johnny Mad Dog, 2005; Kourouma’s Allah Is Not Obliged, 2006; Wilfried N’Sondé’s Silence of the Spirits, 2017, to name but a few) and the 1994 Rwandan genocide or events leading up to this horrific event (Tadjo’s The Shadow of Imana, 2004; Gatoré’s The Past Ahead, 2012; Waberi’s Harvest of Skulls, 2016; Mukasonga’s Cockroaches, 2016; again, the list is not exhaustive). Arguably, Kourouma’s fourth literary work, Allah Is Not Obliged, made the “three percent” cut of translated literature in the Anglo-American market not merely by virtue of its literary quality and playful, innovative and iconoclastic language, but also on the grounds of the notoriety of the subject of child soldiers that had been making headlines in the press, besides appearing prominently in

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

87

the publishing world for some years. To name but a few works of fiction and nonfiction on this topic that flooded the book markets during the early 2000s: Children at War by the American P. W. Singer (Pantheon, 2005) the novel Beasts of No Nation by the Nigerian author, Iweala Uzodinma (HarperCollins, 2005), Moses, Citizen, and Me by the British author of Sierra Leonean heritage Delia Jarrett-Macauley (Granta, 2005) and the previously mentioned Johnny Mad Dog (Picador, 2006) by Dongala. The latter was adapted to the screen in 2009, as were many other stories featuring child soldiers. Lastly, consecration of Kourouma’s novel by the prestigious Renaudot literary prize could not fail to attract the attention of foreign publishers. Narratives in which the second popular sub-theme, that is genocide, dominated were given a boost as a result of the writing initiative “Ecrire par devoir de mémoire,” organized by the Lille-based festival of African literature and culture, Fest’Africa. Ten African authors, who identified as “global African citizens,” were invited to commemorate the Rwandan genocide in their writing (see also Hitchcott 2009).58 They approached the complex subject from a range of angles, combining fact and fiction, interviewing surviving victims, perpetrators, and witnesses grappling with traumatic memories and corrosive guilt. Despite the growing number of narratives in which the personal, the intimate or the domestic (the universal) prevail (as illustrated above, accounting for 30 percent, eleven out of thirty-seven narratives published between 2010 and 2017), Adesokan’s representation of Africa as “a site of perennial political and humanitarian emergencies” (2) persists on a significant scale in the production of francophone sub-Saharan texts translated into English. (In thirteen out of thirty-seven narratives, the themes of genocide, war, political instability as well as post-independence disillusionment prevail; this list excludes narratives where they appear as a secondary topic.) Adesokan voices his concern about the repercussion on African writers by the market for postcolonial novels, situated primarily in Western Europe and North America, “whence, through the process of ‘reversed extraversion,’ their influence radiates backwards to the historical contexts of their authors” (2). It should be emphasized that in the case of translated works into English, the combined effects of both the African writers’ bolstering of the “stereotypical” representation of their continent—themselves possibly sensitive to global market interest—as well as Western-based publishing firms glaringly biased toward cataclysmic African stories may reinforce one another. In Africa Beyond the Mirror, Boubacar Boris Diop concurs with Adesokan’s pessimistic viewpoint, stating that the picture of Africa painted by the media and books, cinema and music grossly distorts reality, thus adapting to the taste of a globalized audience: “What is so upsetting is that it has nothing whatsoever to do with reality no matter what some of us say, either out of desperation or intellectual dishonesty or simple cowardice” (xiv).59 In a similar vein, the

88

Chapter 2

best-selling Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie cautions against “the danger of a single story,” the idea that people living in certain areas of the world all have the same kind of (problematic) experience.60 In order to convert the violence depicted in African literature into a palatable aesthetic form for a Western (as well as African) readership the “perennial emergencies” are often presented with exuberant satire (Sony Labou Tansi’s novels), mordant humor (such as several of Mabanckou’s novels), or from original perspectives: innocent children (Oyono’s Houseboy and the novels narrated by child soldiers) or even a humanitarian dog (Nganang’s Dog Days: An Animal Chronicle). Although literary prizes as a legitimizing stamp of approval awarded by the French literary establishment will be the focus of the next chapter, another Renaudot laureat must be mentioned in this context. In 2012, the Rwandanborn Scholastique Mukasonga won this distinguished prize for her novel Notre-Dame du Nil (Gallimard 2012), published as Our Lady of the Nile by the small independent nonprofit press Archipelago Books in 2014. Presented in a light and charming style, the story of a girl’s lycée develops into a dark chronicle representing in a microcosm the events leading eventually to the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Apart from the novel’s literary qualities, the appeal for a Western readership is the insight it provides into the political and historical circumstances foreshadowing the massacre of the Tutsi and moderate Hutu as well as the responsibilities of all parties involved (including Belgian colonists and adventurers). The back cover of the English edition features the quote, “whoever has loved Africa will be moved by this story. [. . .] It is the very essence of Africa, an immense Africa that will absorb even this terrible genocide” (Joël Prieur, Minute) (emphasis added). Though presented in a truncated quotation for which one cannot hold the literary critic Prieur responsible, this story about genocide allegedly represents “the very essence of Africa.” What “essence” is alluded to, albeit by a critic writing for an extreme right-wing “politically incorrect”61 weekly newspaper? Can other continents also be reduced to “an essence”? Whatever the answer to this question, promotional puffs such as Prieur’s quotation construct the (fictional) representation of Africa from a typical Eurocentric/Western perspective. Not only did the former imperial powers play a fateful role in the Rwandan tragedy, but they themselves have, akin to many nations throughout world history, perpetrated crimes of genocides. This is obviously not the “prerogative” of African nations alone. What is confirmed by the thematic focus of our corpus narratives is that the Anglo-American book market, exploiting its economic as well as linguistic dominance, is in a position to reinforce to a certain degree stereotypes of dominated nations in their selection of published and translated texts (see Venuti, The Scandals 159). As stated, the literary establishment in the

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

89

Western metropolis is overwhelmingly the first to select our corpus narratives—87 percent of the original editions were published in France targeting primarily a French readership—including the thematic content they present that to a certain extent reflects the themes that a Western readership associates with sub-Saharan Africa. Some of these literary works are then winnowed by committees of literary prizes that procure them a windfall of publicity, such as one of the most prestigious French literary prizes for a literary text, the Renaudot, awarded to a novel on the subject of child soldiers and another on genocide.62 Although these are obviously excellently written texts, anglophone publishers and readers of African novels (in any language) have traditionally not celebrated these for their innovative form, technique or style.63 CONTEXTUALIZATION BY THE ENGLISH PARATEXT Whenever a French-language text from a marginal culture is translated into English a second selection takes place by anglophone publishers, generating not only an afterlife for the literary work but also a rewriting, an interpretation of the original text by the translator who is generally removed from the author in space and time. The circulation of this symbolic capital in the form of a translated, “reinterpreted” text beyond its original language entails integration within a new context, or in Bourdieusian terms, a new literary and editorial field. Since these texts travel without their original context—their source field of production—the meaning and function attributed to them change whenever they transit to their target field, a new linguistic and literary space. This transfer, Bourdieu contends, generates misunderstandings as a result of the selection process as well as via “a marking or branding process” (“une opération de marquage”) (“Les Conditions sociales” 4) as these texts are relabeled and presented to a new readership. The name of the publisher or a series can function as the first branding of the text: for instance, Gallimard’s cover design in itself exudes prestige and augments symbolic value of a book. Primarily, however, it is the new paratextual framework of the text—a title, blurbs by critics included on the back cover, a preface or an afterword—that can profoundly modify the volume’s meaning and function in the foreign reception context. Notably the early 1950s corpus narratives were presented with a minimal paratext in their original “stripped-back” French edition: on the back cover some information was included about the African authors and their work, but sometimes even this was lacking.64 These paratexts failed to introduce the French reader to the sub-Saharan writer and culture by way of a guiding preface, contrary to, for instance, the handful of colonial literary texts written by Africans during the 1920s to 1940s that were prefaced by influential Frenchmen.65 No doubt, this patronizing support reminiscent of the

90

Chapter 2

colonial period would have been rejected resolutely by anti-colonial novelists such as Mongo Beti, Ferdinand Oyono, and Ousmane Sembène.66 The dearth of an interpretative framework of the original French-language text is nevertheless striking considering the unfamiliarity of the French reader with these sub-Saharan authors, the novelty of the themes and the foreignness of the culture. In contrast, the American university presses discussed above wielded their editorial influence soundly by systematically supplementing the translated francophone sub-Saharan narrative either with an introduction, a foreword or an afterword by a scholar or the translator of the work. These scholarly contributions to the text, that in the first place address an academic readership, serve as an interpretation, a reading grid—“une grille de lecture”—that guides the readers’ perception of the text they are about to explore. Going back to the example of Cruel City presented above, the French edition (Présence Africaine, 1954) contained a mere three lines of information on the author preceding the text. Paraphrased, the notice informs us that the author, Eza Boto, a twenty-two-year-old student from West Africa, has published hitherto one short story with Présence Africaine. There is no allusion whatsoever to the storyline or to the anti-colonial sentiments expressed in a text published during the late-colonial period. When two years later his second novel, The Poor Christ of Bomba, was published under the Cameroonian writer’s second and final pseudonym, Mongo Beti, the few critics who did review it never mentioned his first published work, no doubt since they were oblivious of its existence. As stated, fifty-nine years later Cruel City is prefaced by a translator’s introduction qualifying its publication as “a pivotal moment for the continent: the first drafts of a Francophone African literary canon.” Whereas the French edition by a small publishing house specialized in African literature presumably reached a relatively insignificant number of readers—mainly African intellectuals—residing in Paris, the English edition targeted in the first place English-language students and scholars of African literature. With the inclusion in the volume of Mongo Beti’s essay “Afrique Noire, littérature rose” (“Romancing Africa”), “a single-minded manifesto” and “Beti’s first anti-establishment attack,” an unambiguous interpretation is prescribed for the reader, according to the translator Pim Higginson. It is worthwhile looking again more closely at Mongo Beti’s essay “Romancing Africa,” which was published in the journal Présence Africaine in 1955. In this article, the Cameroonian author first establishes that black authors write primarily for a European readership, “the French-person-whoreads-novels” (Higginson xiv), that is to say, the bourgeois, the pillar of a great nation whose empire and prestige are crumbling. This petit or grand bourgeois-reader tries to hold on to Black Africa as “his last remaining hunting grounds” (Higginson xv) and is not ready (in 1955, the time of its publication) for an authentic African literature that reveals the true nature of

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

91

the colonial situation. Folklore—as presented in Camara Laye’s The African (Dark) Child, The Radiance of the King or Ousmane Socé’s Karim—is what this typical reader demands from an African author, laments Mongo Beti, adding: One can venture that these ladies and gents would not appreciate a realistic African literature, for what greater risk could there be that their operations should be denounced, dismantled, exposed in the popular press? They will therefore do everything to nip any realistic African literature in the bud. For the reality of Black Africa, its only true reality is before all else colonization and its crimes. (Higginson xv)

Mongo Beti was not far off the mark when he predicted that the public would only in the year 2000 acknowledge the French-language African masterworks written in the 1950s. As illustrated, consecration in the form of an English translation of the mid-1950s anti-colonial texts came almost a decade after the “folkloric” narratives by writers such as Camara Laye. Cruel City, albeit neither a masterwork nor a classic, remained untranslated for almost six decades. Although Mongo Beti would most likely have approved of the English version and the paratextual presentation of his first novel and the accompanying essay, new editorial packaging can also lead to a conflicting reception or even one that is antipodal to the author’s intentions. Echoing Venuti to a certain extent, Bourdieu goes as far as to assert that foreign authors are often exploited and used for causes that they would perhaps disapprove of or challenge in their own country.67 A case in point is the translation of Léonora Miano’s first novel L’Intérieur de la nuit (Plon 2005) published as Dark Heart of the Night in 2010 by Nebraska University Press. Miano took issue with two aspects regarding the paratext of the English edition. First of all, the author protested strongly against the choice of the title “at the very antithesis of the meaning of the text” (53).68 With its Conradian redolence, the title immediately brings to mind a discourse on a barbarian, savage, barely human Africa. When Miano’s suggestion Belly of the Night for the title was rejected by the university press on the grounds of its “connotation,” no acceptable solution was proposed by the editor.69 A second point of discord between the two parties involved the foreword required by the contract signed between the press and the French Embassy in the United States that provided financial aid for the translation. The preface the author discovered on publication of the English edition contained a number of serious inaccuracies, notably in regard to Miano’s native Cameroon, the reasons for leaving her native country and her opinions on Negritude. “That hurt me, but basically, I was simply confronted with the way we are perceived and read,” summarizes Miano

92

Chapter 2

(55).70 All that the publisher—whose fine reputation the Cameroonian author nonetheles acknowledges—had seen in the novel, situated in an unnamed African country, were savagery and misery. Miano explains that although her writing is inspired by real facts, her texts are not necessarily based on personal experience. She adapts reality as raw material to produce a text that she reworks aesthetically according to her own sensitive responsiveness. She does not merely bear witness to violence but attempts to understand the perpetrators and circumstances (40–41). Regrettably, in the paratext, the editors reaffirm certain prevailing prejudices regarding the African continent and Africans while the author’s intention is to explore certain concepts in a general, humanistic sense. This misrepresentation of the author’s first translated text no doubt partially explains the eight-year hiatus between the English publication of the first and second novel by this prolific award-winning author. In 2018, the University of Chicago Press finally published Season of the Shadow, Miano’s seventh book. Contrary to the above example, an adequate introduction to a translated literary text written by a foreign author and presenting an unfamiliar nonWestern culture to a Western readership can facilitate understanding of foreign literatures “on their own terms.” This would prevent what Lefevere qualifies as the pernicious effect of the “category of analogy” (“Composing the Other” 78) that recuperates an unknown genre into a recognizable target framework. He argues that the translator thinks first and foremost in terms of two intertwined grids: the “textual” and the “conceptual” grids that are derived from the cultural and literary conventions (“certain markers”) of a given time and space (“Composing the Other” 75–78). An introduction written by a prefacer with a thorough knowledge of the original literature and culture can prevent reinscription of a new significance in a paratextual framework as well as an imposition of the target culture grids. For instance, in the preface to Kaïdara (both in the original French and its English translation) Lilyan Kesteloot provides a rich contextualization regarding the Fulani traditional jantol—an initiatory account (“un récit initiatique”) in the form of a literate poem—probably unfamiliar to even the educated Western reader. A scholarly introduction of the translation by a specialist on the origins, characteristics, and the role of this traditional Fulani account increases the chances of an appreciation “on its own terms” of this non-Western literary genre. Occasionally the connection between an introduction and the translated literary work it prefaces may appear somewhat tenuous. For instance, the 2001 edition of Camara Laye’s novel The Radiance of the King (New York Review of Books Classics Series) encloses a foreword by the Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison. Although a paragon of literary writing on subjects related to the African continent and its literature, Morrison’s message probably becomes clear to most readers only after reading the novel. Her remarks

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

93

privilege the universal or broader significance over the novel’s particular form of expression. The Nobel laureate’s commentary would have been more appropriate as an afterword, a supporting document, given that she mentions neither the author nor the novel she introduces. In hindsight, this could be deemed fortunate since a year later, in 2002, Camara Laye’s authorship of Le Regard du roi was emphatically disputed—although not absolutely proven— by Adele King in her book Rereading Camara Laye.71 Yet, howeverharmful these doubts cast by King on the novel’s reputation, the performative function of a foreword by a Nobel Prize laureate cannot be underestimated. Few even educated anglophone readers nowadays may have heard of the Guinean Camara Laye, on the other hand, scarce will be those unfamiliar with Toni Morrison. The symbolic value attached to the Nobel Prize winner is thus accrued via the paratext to a translated sub-Saharan literary text almost five decades after its original French publication. It is the “seal of approval” by an African American literary icon that has supplanted the endorsement by colonial administrators and French literary heavyweights that frequently prefaced a sub-Saharan text in the first half of the twentieth century. Once an illustrious literary prize, be it the Nobel, the Booker or the Goncourt, has consecrated an author, it will forever cling to their name. In turn, these award-winning authors can use their reputation to affect the symbolic value of emerging literary texts as they will be in a position to ascribe literary value to burgeoning authors and their texts by writing prefaces and—as revered members of literary prize committees—nominating them for literary prizes. The next chapter will examine the symbolic power conferred by literary prizes (mostly awarded to the source text) and translation prizes (in the target literary space) on the corpus narratives (as well as a wider selection of literary works). The Centre National du Livre qualifies a literary prize as a “genuine lever” for extraduction, since an award-winning book will generate multiple applications for financial translation support.72 To what extent do these prizes in fact augment the works’ visibility and contribute to securing translation deals? Which awards are most successful in engendering an afterlife for a literary work on the Anglo-American (international) book market?

NOTES 1. The consolidation processes in the United States and the United Kingdom were broadly similar, though each publishing field had its own characteristics (Thompson, Merchants 118). 2. The German conglomerate Bertelsmann and the British-owned Penguin are two examples of these European companies who entered the US publishing market. The Hachette Book Group (HBG) was created when Hachette Livre, a global

94

Chapter 2

publishing company based in France, acquired Time Warner Book Group from Time Warner in 2006. In 2016, Hachette Book Group was the fourth largest trade publisher in the United States in units sold (Milliot). 3. “Les nouveaux talents ou les points de vue originaux et critiques trouvent difficilement leur place dans les grandes maisons d’édition.” 4. Eric Vigne designates the early 1980s in France as the beginning of what he refers to as “the cycle of commodification” (“le cycle de la marchandisation” 51), describing it as the start of an era when “the public’s reception determines the writing, values in the sphere of public relations determine the product’s development, and fame acquired beyond the literary world—in its widest sense—serves as a yardstick for talent” (72) (“la réception par le public préside à l’écriture, les valeurs de la sphère de communication à l’élaboration du produit, la notoriété acquise à l’extérieur de l’univers de la littérature, dans son acception la plus large, tient lieu de toise pour le talent”). See also Piault, “De la ‘rationalisation’ à l’hyperconcentration.” Referring to the early 1980s as the start of the “hyper-concentration,” he notes that by the end of the twentieth century, the “duopole” consisting of Havas Publications Edition (HPE)—subsidiary of la Compagnie Générale des Eaux—and Hachette Livre— subsidiary of Lagardère Group—have a turnover of more than half of the industry and control approximately two-thirds of the book distribution in France. Merely four independent general publishers continue to operate: Gallimard, Albin Michel, Flammarion, and Le Seuil (628). In 2017, Piault notes that the publishing industry continues to become more concentrated: the ten largest publishing conglomerates and independent publishers are responsible for 88.9 percent of the industry’s turnover, a 10.8 percent rise in five years (Piault, “Classement 2018” 21) (See also chapter 1). 5. For a detailed analysis of the two poles of production, see Bourdieu’s article “La production de la croyance : contribution à une économie des biens symboliques” (1977). 6. Similarly, John Frow in his work Cultural Studies and Cultural Value (1995), aiming to understand the cultural production and consumption in the postmodern world, refuses to distinguish between the realms of “the opposing mass-produced ‘low’ and the ‘high’ culture” as a “unified and hierarchical system,” as described by Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Certeau (13). The blurring of the distinction between commercial bestseller and intellectual bestseller, argues Frow, can, therefore, be connected to the inclusion of “high culture” as a “pocket of commodity culture. Its primary relationship is not to the ruling class but to the intelligentsia, and to the education system which is the locus of their power and the generative point for most high-cultural practices” (86). 7. “Frontlist” refers to new and recently published books that gradually transition into the “backlist” after approximately one year (Thompson, Merchants 29). 8. Pouly illustrates the phenomenon of the literary bestseller in her study on the critical reception of Zadie Smith’s novel White Teeth (2000). 9. Founded in 1992, Soft Skull Press moved from New York to Berkeley in 2007. 10. The supplementary leeway of the small independent non-profit publishers in the United States is reiterated by Sapiro with regard to the selection of translations. In the case of a translated text, editors will first and foremost consider the literary and

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

95

intellectual quality of a text. Once it is endorsed, they will seek out grants that will allow to offset costs incurred for the acquisition of foreign rights and the translation (“Préambule” 22). 11. See also Olivia Snaije’s article “French Literary Agents Create a Professional Alliance,” Publishing Perspectives, March 16, 2016, announcing the creation of a professional organization that unites French and francophone literary agents, l’Alliance ALF (Alliances des Agents Littéraires Français) to “ensure optimal representation of authors and publishers” on the international book market (2016). 12. Astier and Péchet have also criticized the leading French literary publishers for failing to transfer their know-how to the rest of the French-speaking world. Contrary to the British and American publishers that have taken root in the English-speaking world, the French are not represented in the francophone world by an independent editorial body, which complicates the sale of publishing rights in these regions. 13. Double or triple publications in the same year reflecting the novel’s popularity include: Batouala (René Maran) by Thomas Seltzer Inc., New York and by Jonathan Cape, London, in 1922; Mission to Kala (Mongo Beti) by Frederick Muller Ltd., London, and MacMillan, New York, in 1958; Bound to Violence (Yambo Ouologuem) by Heinemann Educational in Oxford, Secker and Warburg, London, by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York in 1971; a (new) translation of the 1938 edition of Batouala by Black Orpheus, Washington, and by Heinemann Educational, London, in 1972; Remember Ruben (Mongo Beti) by New Horn Press, Ibadan, Nigeria, by Heinemann Educational, London and by Three Continents Press, Washington in 1980; The Suns of Independence (Ahmadou Kourouma) by Heinemann Educational, London and Holmes and Meier, New York in 1981; So Long a Letter (Mariama Bâ) by New Horn Press, Ibadan, Nigeria, and by Virago, London and by Heinemann Educational, London, in 1981. 14. Henceforth, the African Writers Series will be referred to as AWS. 15. Wole Soyinka criticized the series for confining African writers to a separately tagged category of books. A possible consequence of this specific “packaging” is revealed by Ibironke’s archival research: Heinemann’s A.R. Beal contended that English teachers would have accepted Achebe’s Things Fall Apart more readily if it had been part of a series written by authors from all over the English-speaking world instead of being included in a series devoted exclusively to African writers (69). 16. Henceforth, Heinemann Educational Books will be referred to as Heinemann. 17. For a detailed account of the AWS, I refer to James Currey’s Africa Writes Back. The African Writers Series & the Launch of African Literature (2008). 18. Other rights acquired by Heinemann in the 1970s involved Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure in 1972 from Walker Publishing Company (United States); King Lazarus by Mongo Beti in 1970 from Frederick Muller Ltd. (United Kingdom); and Agatha Moudio’s Son by Francis Bebey in 1971 from Lawrence Hill, New York (as well as Bebey’s The Ashanti Doll mentioned above). 19. As a result of the takeover in 1983 of Heinemann Group by British Tyre and Rubber (BTR) as well as a new management, only one or two titles continue to appear in the AWS per year. This coincides with the collapse of the African book market and the beginning of the “African book famine” resulting in Heinemann’s concentration

96

Chapter 2

on sales in Britain and Europe (Currey 296–97). The AWS was discontinued in 2003 but revived in 2011 by Pearson that bought the series. (See the Naija Stories website for Nigerian fiction encouraging new African authors to send in manuscripts: http:​/​/www​​.naij​​astor​​ies​.c​​om​/20​​11​/08​​/pear​​son​-r​​evive​​s​-afr​​ican-​​write​​rs​-​se​​ries-​​calls​​-fo. Accessed January 28, 2019.) 20. In an unpublished preface to Poems of Black Africa, Wole Soyinka refers to the activities of British publishers as a “second scramble for Africa” (Ibironke 54). 21. Both during the colonial era—when relations existed first and foremost between the colonizing nation and its colonies—as well as post-independence— exchanges between the two linguistic—that is, francophone and anglophone—regions in Africa, at least regarding literary issues, seem to have been virtually nonexistent. In an interview with Elaine Savory, Abiola Irele explains that since neither at school nor at university French courses were offered, he taught himself this European language—he mastered already several African languages—which allowed him in 1960 to obtain a scholarship to study in France, complete a doctorate at the Sorbonne and eventually become an advocate for francophone African (as well as Caribbean) literature in anglophone Africa (Savory 117). Regarding the paucity of anglophone African literature in francophone sub-Saharan Africa, see also Tadjo (101) and an interview by Harrell-Bond with Mariama Bâ (213). 22. See also Kwame Anthony Appiah’s arguments for reading African literature in the American academy (70) and Christopher Miller’s chapter 2 “Ethnicity and Ethics” in Theories of Africans. Similar arguments have been invoked regarding Maghrebi films, whose cinematic works “are recognized almost exclusively for their documentary value” (Babana-Hampton 128). 23. Far from disputing New York’s central role on the literary world scene, I would nevertheless nuance its importance with respect to the dissemination of African literature, whose mostly small-scale American publishers are scattered across the United States. 24. Although the genre of the novel dominates in both directions—translations from French to English and English to French alike—some noticeable differences exist between the type of “exchanges” as well. Commercial books—“mass” literature for a wide readership—prevail within the category of English literature translated into French, while the titles translated from French to English are qualified as predominantly upmarket. In France, American detective stories (“le roman noir”) and science fiction are particularly in demand, accounting for approximately 40 percent of all translations from English, while one French to English translated title out of five consists of drama or poetry, genres for which demand is generally low (Sapiro, “Les échanges littéraires” 50–51). 25. These percentages, based on a period covering 1985 to 2002, fail to accurately reflect diverging publishing formats in France and the United States. The distinction made in the United States between hardcover and paperback (as well as rack size) does not correspond strictly to the French “grand format” and “livre de poche.” While almost all of American hardcovers appear in a paperback edition after twelve to eighteen months, this type of second life is not attributed systematically to the French first editions (Sapiro, “Les échanges littéraires” 47).

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

97

26. In Sapiro’s 1990–2003 study, the University of Nebraska Press occupies the lead position with sixty translations, while the second place is taken by the giant Knopf with thirty-three translations—presumably comprising a large backlist of classics—followed by Modern Library, owned by Pearson, with thirty translations (Sapiro, “Les échanges littéraires” 37). 27. Nine first editions of the corpus narratives were published in the CARAF series, and two were added after a previous publication: Tropical Circle by Alioum Fantouré in 1989 (first published in the United Kingdom by Longman in 1981) and The Abandoned Baobab by Ken Bugul in 2008 (first published in English in 1995 by Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago). 28. See https​:/​/ww​​w​.upr​​ess​.v​​irgin​​ia​.ed​​u​/sea​​rch​-s​​ite​?s​​earch​​_api_​​views​​_​full​​text=​​ CARAF​. Accessed January 29, 2019. 29. In 2017, the thirteenth sub-Saharan novel, Tropical Circle, was temporarily out of stock. 30. “ce succès reflète l’intérêt, depuis la fin des années 1980, pour la production d’auteurs d’origine africaine et caribéenne, intérêt dans lequel les spécialistes de littérature francophone, nécessairement plus tournés vers la production contemporaine que les collègues des départements de français, ont joué un rôle déterminant.” 31. Email correspondence dated January 12, 2016. A similar selection procedure is followed by the editorial director of Indiana University Press and the series editor of its Global African Voices series. The editors of this series select both the work and the translator; after consultation with reviewers the editorial board takes the final decision about publication (email correspondence dated January 12, 2016, with the editorial director of Indiana University Press, Dee Mortensen). 32. Email correspondence dated January 19, 2016. 33. Email correspondence dated January 19, 2016. A gradual shift in emphasis from “educated” to the “general” readership is discernable in the statements by consecutive series editors. The editorial director of the Global African Voices series at Indiana University Press underscores the relevance of a broadening readership: “We hope that books published in the series will appeal to a wide reading public. The novels have been sold in bookstores and have been adopted in classes that deal with African topics in all subject areas” (email correspondence dated January 12, 2016). 34. These are the numbers for 2017. In our corpus only 23 percent, 27 out of 118 titles are authored by a total of 15 women. See chapter 4 on the literary production by early sub-Saharan francophone women. 35. The three novels that appeared in the Global African Voices series in 2018 and the title scheduled for 2019 at the time of writing are also all male-authored. 36. http:​/​/www​​.iupr​​ess​.i​​ndian​​a​.edu​​/inde​​x​.php​​?cPat​​h​=103​​7​_313​​0​_104​​​15​&CD​​ path=​​3​_5. Accessed January 29, 2019. 37. Mongo Beti’s article “Romancing Africa”—originally entitled “Afrique noire, littérature rose”—was first published in the journal Présence Africaine, established two years before the publishing house of the same name by Alioune Diop (A.B. Présence Africaine 1, July–August 1955: 133–40. The initials A.B. refer to the author’s real name Alexandre Biyidi).

98

Chapter 2

38. This qualifier is by Abdourahman A. Waberi (10). 39. The accomplishment of the series’ mission is acknowledged by the following blurb from Saturday Nation on the Global African Voices website: “With every new translation in its Global African Voices series, Indiana University Press, United States, moves a step further toward the realization of its goal of overcoming the fragmentariness of modern African literature by integrating originally French-language literary works into the English-language stream.” 40. Currey underscores the apparent interest in translated French-language African literature from non-literary departments in American academia: when Heinemann established a branch in the United States in 1978, “the demand from US universities lifted the sales as titles became used far beyond the literature departments” (xxv). 41. See also Lepape’s cynical take on the importance of an English version for a text’s inclusion in the (shifting) category of world literature (25). 42. Damrosch distinguishes world literature from “global literature,” the type of reading “unaffected by any specific context” and available worldwide at airports (5). 43. Fortunately, the growing volume of ebooks made available via libraries or bookstores simplifies access to texts, though the contingent condition of providing them electronically remains. 44. These data do not take into consideration small numbers of new or secondhand copies still available via Amazon or other second-hand booksellers. 45. Among the university presses that publish corpus narratives, the Global African Voices series provides digital versions of all its titles; CARAF offers a digital copy of all titles since 2012; Michigan State University Press, that lacks a specific series for African literature, provides no digital editions. 46. In the United Kingdom it is Pearson that publishes the AWS at the time of writing. 47. See the website of the Chadwyck-Healet Literature Collections. http:​//​col​​lecti​​ ons​.c​​hadwy​​ck​.co​​.uk​/m​​arket​​ing​/l​​ist​​_o​​f​_all​​.jsp. Accessed March 9, 2020. 49. See the Archipelago Books website https://archipelagobooks​ .org​ /about/. Accessed October 16, 2019. 49. See the Serpent’s Tail website https​:/​/se​​rpent​​stail​​.com/​​about​​-serp​​ents​-​​tail. Accessed October 16, 2019. 50. See Deep Vellum Publishing website at http://deepvellum​.org​/about/. Accessed October 16, 2019. 51. For example, Lawrence Hill Books originally based in Brooklyn (McDowell) and Three Continents Press in Washington (Schudel) presented their publications as “third-world” literature. 52. In 1991, V.Y. Mudimbe’s Between Tides was issued by Simon and Schuster. Midsize/larger publishers were responsible for merely four out of sixty-two corpus narratives between 2000 and 2017: Little Boys Come from the Stars (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001) and Johnny Mad Dog (Picador, 2005) by the Congolese born Emmanuel Dongala, the 2008 Renaudot prizewinner, Tierno Monénembo’s The King of Kahel (Amazon Crossing, 2010) and Patrick Nganang’s Mount Pleasant (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016).

Entering the Anglo-American Book Market

99

53. In her discussion of the paratextual status of the translator, Sapiro quotes Jill Schoolman, the founder of the small non-profit publishing house Archipelago Books in Brooklyn, who asserts that the myth among (American) editors that translations don’t sell seems to have evolved into a “self-fulfilling prophecy” (“Les échanges littéraires” 31). 54. Oyono’s first two novels, Houseboy and The Old Man and the Medal both appeared ten, respectively, thirteen years after their first publication (1966 and 1969); Mongo Beti’s The Poor Christ of Bomba and Dadié’s Climbié both fifteen years after their French publication (in 1971), while Sembène’s The Black Docker remained untranslated for thirty-one years (until 1987). 55. Five of the seven narratives were published by Heinemann in a first translated edition, the other two were acquired from another anglophone publisher. 56. See Batchelor (24–28) for a detailed description of, in particular, the first five categories of narratives as well as numerous examples. 57. In 2003, this text appeared in a new translation, Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote. 58. Among these writings, texts by the following authors were translated into English: Boubacar David Biop, Tierno Monénembo, Véronique Tadjo, Abdourahman Waberi. 59. Adesokan highlights the complex relationship between (global) market (the novel as a commodity) and audience (the novel as a cultural object), two notions that do not necessarily coincide (3). See also Graham Huggan’s concept of “strategic exoticism” (The Postcolonial Exotic 32) and Sarah Brouillette’s understanding of “authorial self-consciousness” (68). 60. See also the controversy surrounding Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83, consecrated by several prestigious literary prizes, but perceived by some as “misogynist poverty porn” (Obi-Young). 61. “Minute, hebdomadaire politiquement incorrect. Le site officiel.” http://www​ .minute​-hebdo​.fr. Accessed October 16, 2019. 62. Kourouma’s Allah Is Not Obliged and Mukasonga’s Our Lady of the Nile. The third winner is The King of Kahel by Tierno Monénembo, awarded the Prix Renaudot in 2008 and published in an English edition in 2010 by Amazon Crossing. 63. See for instance the remarks by Ainehi Edoro, editor of Brittle Paper on African literature in “Why it Matters that Sarah L. Manyika is on the Goldsmiths Prize Shortlist.” It must be noted that in France, nevertheless, writing by some African writers such as Kourouma has been hailed for their innovative contribution to French language. 64. For instance, the first edition of The Poor Christ of Bomba (Robert Laffont 1956) by Mongo Beti provided no information whatsoever regarding the author and his work on the back cover. After Mongo Beti discovered that his novel had been illegally reprinted in 1970 by Kraus Reprint in Liechtenstein the text appeared in a new edition by Présence Africaine in 1976 that included on the back cover a short description of its contents and a fairly detailed account of the author’s itinerary. 65. Some examples of these texts and their prefacers are: Ousmane Socé Diop’s Karim, roman sénégalais (Nouvelles éditions latines, 1935) introduced by the

100

Chapter 2

colonial administrator Robert Delavignette; Paul Hazoumé’s Doguicimi (Larose, 1938), prefaced by another colonial administrator, George Hardy; and, of course, Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous preface “Orphée noir” to Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Anthologie de la poésie nègre et malgache (Presses Universitaires de France, 1948). An exception to this “rule” is Batouala to which the author René Maran himself wrote the very controversial introduction. On this topic see also Midiohouan. 66. On the other hand, the second novel by the pro-French Union writer Camara Laye, The Radiance of the King (Plon, 1954) was prefaced by Cornut-Gentille, Governor General of French West Africa. 67. “Les auteurs étrangers sont souvent l’objet d’usages très instrumentalistes ; ils sont souvent utilisés pour des causes que peut-être ils réprouveraient ou récuseraient dans leur propre pays” (“Les conditions sociales” 5). 68. “aux antipodes du propos du texte” 69. The “connotation” of belly was never explained. In 2006, Serpent’s Tail in London published Fatou Diome’s novel Le Ventre de l’Atlantique as The Belly of the Atlantic. 70. “Cela m’a blessée mais, au fond, j’étais simplement confrontée à la manière dont nous sommes perçus et lus.” 71. In fact, it is even more likely that rumors surrounding the true authorship of the novel had previously circulated and had already reached the editors of the puzzling novel’s new edition. 72. See page 20 of the Rapport d’activité 2018 https​:/​/en​​.cala​​meo​.c​​om​/bo​​oks​/0​​ 01828​​7152c​​1a​a31​​d35a8​. Accessed October 16, 2019.

Chapter 3

Literary Awards for Minority Authors and Their Impact on Further Consecration

Whereas the previous chapters focused on the marginal group of francophone sub-Saharan authors whose texts eventually reached the Anglo-American market as translated literature, the current chapter widens the scope of the study via the prism of consecration in the form of literary and translation awards/grants in a twofold manner: by addressing, on the one hand, the representation of women authors—a minority category in itself, as will be illustrated—and, on the other hand, via the inclusion of minority writers in general. Concurrently, the focus in this chapter on the recognition of female authors paves the way for chapter 4 where the spotlight will be on the first generation of francophone sub-Saharan women writers who emerged belatedly in the 1970s.1 Suffice it to state at this juncture that the allegedly “universalist” and “neutral” criteria applied by the literary institutions in their creation of the canon have until far into the twentieth century erected a barrier for the admission of female writing to the literary pantheon, leading us to suspect that, at least historically, juries of literary prizes reveal a similar bias in their choice of canonized texts. Pertinent to the discussion regarding this relatively recent awareness of iniquitous female representation within literary production as well as literary institutions is the question of the latest developments and attempts at rectifying this imbalance. The second category of texts that will be analyzed through the lens of consecration by literary and translation awards consists of those authored by minority writers in general, that is, not exclusively works by francophone sub-Saharan writers. In regards to the definition of authors with an “ethnic” minority background, this analysis adheres to Susan Pickford’s definition: authors in this category originate from an ethnic minority, or a non-francophone or a nonwhite background (233). Henceforth, I will refer to this category of authors as “minority” writers. This definition excludes 101

102

Chapter 3

francophone writers from French-speaking countries such as Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Quebec with relatively easy access to the hexagonal book market. Christiane Chaulet Achour has labeled work by the latter category of authors as the “literary francophonies from the North” (Les Francophonies 5). Texts by some of these authors—such as the work by the Belgians Marguerite Yourcenar and Henri Michaux or, more recently, the Swiss Joël Dicker—have been almost instantly integrated into French literature. However, in the current study, the two remaining categories of “francophonies” will be foregrounded: on the one hand, texts from authors of non-francophone origin, those who have written in French as a result of their personal trajectory or social circumstances in their native country—such as the Romanian-French playwright Eugène Ionesco or the Russian-born Elsa Triolet and Andrei Makine—and, in addition, texts from the “francophonies of the south,” by those from former colonies or writers exiled from occupied regions—such as Léopold Sédar Senghor, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, or Assia Djebar (Chaulet Achour, “Tribune”). A detailed picture of these often “migrant” writers will be presented, as they are acknowledged by one type of cultural institution: the literary prize committee. PRESTIGIOUS FRENCH LITERARY PRIZES In his study on literary prizes and the value of culture The Economy of Prestige, James English, drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of “field” and “capital,” characterizes the role of cultural prizes as follows: “Institutionally, the prize functions as a claim to authority—the authority, at bottom, to produce cultural value. It provides an institutional basis for exercising, or attempting to exercise, control over the cultural economy, over the distribution of esteem and reward on a particular cultural field” (51). A prize confers visibility and legitimation on the cultural product, be it a work of art, a film or a book. In the case of the publishing industry, all the agents involved in the marketing of books—“the realities of power and authority” (Said 5)—including the authors themselves, benefit from literary prizes in the form of symbolic as well as economic capital. In recent decades, literary prizes have proliferated excessively, an inflation that English attributes to their “capital intraconversion.” That is to say, they are “the single best instrument for negotiating transactions between cultural and economic, cultural and social, or cultural and political capital” (10). For instance, the symbolic capital of a new Nobel Prize in Literature will almost immediately be converted into economic capital in the form of a spike in demand for the winner’s literary work, followed by an increased or re-stimulated production and sales of books whenever available in the language of the audience (Spencer 204).2 Other prestigious

Literary Awards for Minority Authors

103

national or international prizes—or even mention on their shortlist or longlist—prove to be accrediting vehicles with similar effects. While the winner of the Booker Prize—commercially sponsored and awarded for the first time in Britain in 1969—often enhances hardback sales by 40,000 to 80,000 copies (Cachin and Ducas 89), book sales of the winners of the most eminent and close to a century-old French literary prizes generally skyrocket. Between 2010 and 2014, the Goncourt prize book reached average sales volumes of 395,000 copies, and the Renaudot laureate sold about half that average number, 178,000, during the same period.3 The prize-winning works then appear on bookstore shelves with their red sash marked “Prix Goncourt” or “Prix Renaudot” as a form of quality label. In addition, invariably a reference will be made to the award on the front cover of any subsequent publication or new edition of a previously published work by the same author. These prominent prizes awarded each fall—“les grands prix d’automne”—amid an excessive media circus must nevertheless be distinguished from the mass of other approximately 2,000 literary prizes awarded annually in France by, for example, the professionals in the book industry (prix FNAC, prix des Libraires) the media/ viewers (prix France-Télévision), readers (le grand prix des Lectrices de Elle), the blogosphere (babelio​.co​m; critiqueslibres​.c​om), and young readers (Goncourt des lycéens), to name but the most important (Ducas, La Littérature 5–11).4 In a survey of writers in the Rhône-Alpes region in France, Bernard Lahire found that 45 percent of them had been awarded some kind of literary prize (189). As a result of such hyperinflation of literary prizes their additional symbolic value and consecrating power diminish accordingly. Only insight into the specificity of the prize, such as acquaintance with its history, previous laureates and/or specific criteria for designating a winning book, can then function as selection tools for the readers, confronted as they are year after year with an expanding book production and an increasing number of red sashes. Unquestionably, the “instrument par excellence of symbolic action” (English quotes Bourdieu and Haacke, 190) with a powerful influence on potential readers and, therefore, sales, is scandal or even the threat or promise of scandal. “There is perhaps no device more perfectly suited than scandal to making things happen on the field of culture” (“Winning the Culture Game” 190), asserts English. Exploited by social media, a “buzz” will catapult these authors at the center of the commotion and their texts to the forefront of “bookish” (not necessarily literary) discussions, generating political, social and certainly cultural capital. Drawing examples from the Nobel Prize, the Booker Prize, and the Bollingen Prize, English illustrates in “Scandalous Currency” (chapter 8 of The Economy of Prestige 187–96) that art prizes have since time immemorial been associated with scandal, and literary prizes are no exception. Whether the controversy blown up by the media involves

104

Chapter 3

the legitimacy of the judges, their dubious aesthetic judgment, their ulterior political motives or corrupt practices, there is no shortage of titles that have gained journalistic currency or capital5 via controversial consecration by a literary prize, such as the first narrative of our corpus, René Maran’s Batouala6 (see chapter 5). Placed in the (dubious) limelight of the prestigious Goncourt prize, this novel was translated into several foreign languages within a year after its original publication. Literary prize scandals have even fomented rebellious factions within the dominant literary field and led to the creation of new prizes, as in the case of the Prix Femina established as a “counter model” in 1905 for the Prix Goncourt that was denied to a deserving woman writer (Ducas, La Littérature 45). Primarily, however, pre-eminent literary prizes and their corresponding red sashes remain one of the most coveted and effective selection instruments on the prolific book market, although “‘profane’ agents” (Sabo 33) active on TV, radio and particularly the internet—blogs by “average” readers, authors’ personal websites and online reading community platforms, such as Babelio in France—have arguably gained considerable influence on the celebretization of up-and-coming writers as well as literary stars.7 The “increasing synergy between literary value and media presence in the French publishing marketplace” (Pickford 234) tends to reproduce the prestige model prevailing in the United Kingdom and the United States. Both the Booker and Goncourt award-winning ceremonies—the former is televised, the latter heavily ritualized—have become “cultural spectacles” amid which the winning authors are routinely treated as celebrities. Of course, most authors aspire to be “canonized” as a laureate of a distinguished literary award such as the Booker, the Goncourt, the Pulitzer Prize, or the Nobel Prize in Literature.8 These labels will remain attached to the winner for life. The image of award-winning authors as celebrity is thus constructed by the agents involved in the media circus. Writers in general suffer from what Ducas calls “the Faust complex,” desiring eternal literary fame without having to sell their soul to the devil by succumbing to the commodifying forces of modern media and marketing strategies (Ducas, “De la fabrique” 158).9 The celebretization process is to a large extent set in motion by the publisher who is responsible for the construction of the author’s image by way of biographical information on the book jacket, although the role of the epitext—involving television, radio and magazine interviews with the author—remains paramount. Particularly mediagenic authors will be successful in a celebrity culture where they may emerge, so to speak, as their own brand: in France, the red sash stating in large white letters the name of the author promotes their next book, rendering information regarding the content almost irrelevant. For instance, Alain Mabanckou’s latest texts Tomorrow I’ll Be Twenty, The Lights of Pointe-Noire and Black Moses were presented

Literary Awards for Minority Authors

105

by their respective publishers in this manner.10 Moreover, Mabanckou, who does not shun publicity, is adept at creating his public persona. In his short story “A Negro in Paris”—included in The Tears of the Black Man—he toys humorously with his “trademark,” the signature flat cap. The story relates the encounter in a Paris gym between the narrator and an African “brother” who questions the former’s identity as the famous Congolese author he has seen on television . . . since he is not wearing his cap!11 On the towering ladder of French literary prizes, the Goncourt occupies the top rung.12 Qualified by some as the “national Nobel prize” (Ducas, La Littérature 12) its jury, the Goncourt academicians, co-opted by their peers and until recently appointed for life, reflect “a balanced representation of the three great publishing companies: Gallimard, Grasset, and Le Seuil” (Cachin and Ducas 86). This trio is disparagingly referred to as Galligrasseuil13 on account of their dominating—and, some critics of the system would argue, corrupting—influence on the selection of prize winners and the economic capital these spawn.14 The Goncourt label guarantees an international reputation unequalled by any other national French literary prize. Nevertheless, the Renaudot is the prestigious literary prize that has par excellence showcased some of our corpus narratives the most effectively, notably since 2000.15 This development prompts us to look more closely at the prizes’ individual potential consecrating power leading to international (anglophone) exposure and recognition, particularly in recent years. Whereas in the period 1980–1999, 25 percent of Renaudot and 65 percent of Goncourtwinning titles were translated into English, since 2000 these percentages have risen to, respectively, 67 percent and 89 percent, indicating not only an increase in appeal to Anglo-American publishers of both juries’ favorites but also the relatively greater boost in popularity of the Renaudot winners. With respect to our corpus narratives, it must be noted that the Goncourt prize was awarded only once, to the first narrative represented in the corpus, René Maran’s Batouala. Ducas emphasizes that Francophonie remained a totally foreign concept to Edmond de Goncourt’s testament that established the prize in the early twentieth century. As a matter of fact, the founder of the prize was known for his nationalist and xenophobic stance (Ducas, “La place marginale” 354). Indeed, racial as well as gender diversity was certainly lacking among the Goncourt laureates between 1903 and 1980, that included only six women (8 percent) and eight minority authors (10 percent). While René Maran was the earliest minority Goncourt laureate in 1921, this honor was bestowed for the first time on a female author—the Russian-born Elsa Triolet—in 1944. In recent decades, the share of Goncourt’s women laureates has increased only minimally (between the period 1980–1999 and 2000–2017, there was a slight increase of female laureates from 15 percent to 17 percent). Likewise, during the same decades the percentage of minority

106

Chapter 3

writers that were recognized increased merely from 20 to 22 percent.16 In its lack of recognition of female writers, the prix Goncourt, however, did not contrast markedly with the Nobel Prize in Literature that consecrated nine women between 1901 and 2000 (9 percent) and five between 2000 and 2017 (28 percent), while the Swedish Academy honored its first black laureate, the Nigerian Wole Soyinka, in 1986. This phenomenon of women’s systematic under-recognition in literature (as well as science) was given the name “the Matilda effect” by Margaret W. Rossiter and dictates the recognition of women writers of our corpus, or rather the paucity thereof. Rossiter coined the term in 1993 in reference to Matilda Joslyn Gage, a nineteenth-century suffragist and early knowledge sociologist. It is the counterpart of “the Matthew effect” described by Robert Merton in 1968, the skewed pattern of accumulation of advantage for known scientists to the detriment of unknown ones, a phenomenon that is equally visible in the mechanisms ruling the recognition of francophone sub-Saharan authors, as will be shown. In recent decades, the Renaudot placed twice as many women in the spotlight as the Goncourt, representing 20 percent of female laureates between 1980 and 1999, and 39 percent since 2000, equaling the percentage of annual feminine awardees of the prix Femina since the turn of the millennium. As mentioned earlier, the latter, also dubbed the “Goncourt des Dames” was created in the early twentieth century as a response to the “misogynous tradition of the Goncourt” (Ducas, “Le prix Femina” 76). Its all-female jury envisaged its role as grounding women writers in the French literary tradition alongside their male counterparts. Although in 2013 the Femina was awarded to Léonora Miano (one of our corpus authors) for her novel La Saison de l’Ombre,17 the prize’s recognition of minority writers since 2000 was significantly lower than the Renaudot’s, which increased the number of minority authors considerably (from 15 percent in the 1980s and 1990s to 33 percent since 2000).18 This expansion in diversity coincides with the Renaudot’s recognition of subSaharan novels: five corpus narratives received the Renaudot laurels, four of them since 2000: Ouologuem’s Bound to Violence in 1968, Kourouma’s Allah Is Not Obliged in 2000, Mabanckou’s Memoirs of a Porcupine in 2006, Monénembo’s The King of Kahel in 2008 and Mukasonga’s Our Lady of the Nile in 2012. FRANCOPHONE AND AFRICAN LITERARY PRIZES An additional category of literary prizes relevant to our corpus must be highlighted, namely those awarded solely and pointedly to francophone and/ or African literary works. Among these specialized prizes, the oldest one is the Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique Noire awarded by the ADELF—the

Literary Awards for Minority Authors

107

Association des Ecrivains de Langue Française—to authors of sub-Saharan African origin having published a literary work in French.19 Awarded for the first time in 1961, the prize evolved from a combination of colonial awards created in the 1950s: the Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique équatoriale française and the Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique occidentale française that almost exclusively recognized metropolitan authors writing about Africa (Bush and Ducournau 214). The jury of the Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique noire was originally nominated annually and consisted of members of ADELF as well as representatives of the newly independent African states, although it matured into a committee of literary professionals in the late 1980s. The selection criteria applied by the judges are not easily decipherable, except that the consecrated works conform linguistically to the Académie Française standards. Dubbed the “black Goncourt”20 or “African Goncourt,” the Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique noire is not devoid of ambiguity, steeped as it is in a tradition forged by an association that even recently “scarcely pauses for reflection on its colonial heritage” (Bush and Ducournau 213). “When this award is mentioned in specialized [African] circles, the tone shifts between disdain for this award and acknowledgement of the appropriateness of the jury’s literary selection,” remarks Ducournau (La Fabrique 198).21 Notwithstanding the rather inconsequential effect of the award in terms of copies sold or prestige accrued beyond the African continent, Ducournau notes that a significant number of its laureates—Francis Bebey, Henri Lopès, Amadou Hampâté Bâ, Ahmadou Kourouma and Tierno Monénembo—has subsequently gained literary stature or received more prestigious accolades such as the Renaudot (La Fabrique 203). In view of the significant number of francophone sub-Saharan authors who have contributed to the African canon on the list of laureates, it is striking that merely fourteen out of the forty-five consecrated narratives (31 percent) have appeared in English translation.22 Moreover, the bulk of translated consecrated titles (11) were issued before 1990. Thereafter numbers dwindled to two or three during the 1990s and 2000s. It is, therefore, tenable to argue that despite the relative esteem in which the Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique noire is held in francophone subSaharan Africa, this additional symbolic value often fails to lead to recognition of the prize-winning narratives on the Anglo-American market. Ducas labels it chiefly as an “honorary” literary award (“La place marginale” 348) that, additionally, acts primarily as a precursor to more prestigious marks of homage, such as the Renaudot prize. The latter is then likely to lead to further consecration by anglophone publishers. Another significant, distinctly African, literary prize that deserves to be foregrounded is the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, an annual $10,000 prize that ran from 1980 to 2009. It was created by the Japanese publisher Shoïchi Noma “as a means of alleviating what he perceived as the acute

108

Chapter 3

book needs of Africa and of encouraging the publication of works by African authors and on the African continent” (Owomoyela 132; emphasis added). The jury of the Noma Prize consisted exclusively of literature specialists and African writers, as did the juries of most other African prizes created since the 1990s. Endorsing not exclusively French-language literary, scholarly and juvenile work from the African continent, the prize, according to The Columbia Guide to West African Literature, constituted “a guarantee of that work’s international success” (Owomoyela 132). However, this statement must be taken with a grain of salt since only two of the four winning francophone titles were translated into English: So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ, the first novel that received the prize in 1980, and Werewere Liking’s The Amputated Memory in 2005.23 Of these two prize-winning literary works by francophone sub-Saharan women writers, Bâ’s novel, translated into at least nineteen languages—in 2015 in a Basque and a Chinese edition—has truly attained international stature (see also chapter 4). For this study, a total of six categories of literary awards have been established. They are visualized in figure 3.1: the prix Goncourt, the prix Renaudot, a selection of other French prizes,24 the Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique noire, other francophone or not language-specific African prizes

Figure 3.1  Number of Literary Prizes Awarded per Prize Category and per Five-Year Interval to the Original French Publications of (118) Corpus Narratives (1921–2017).

Literary Awards for Minority Authors

109

(see examples below), and finally the category “other” that includes various international prizes.25 The Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique noire functioned for almost five decades (1960–2010) as the most important consecrating institution of francophone sub-Saharan literature, and at times as the only one. It is equally apparent that from the 1990s onward, though especially during the first decade of the new millennium, corpus narratives have been recognized by a growing number of specific francophone/African prizes. With regard to general hexagonal literary awards, including the prix Renaudot, markedly increased acknowledgement of our corpus narratives begins around 2000.26 An impressive number of specifically African and francophone prizes has been created since the last decade of the twentieth century—and a fortiori since the turn of the millennium—thus following the international trend of literary award inflation as well as a dramatic increase in the publications of corpus narratives, in French as well as in English.27 Among those relevant for our corpus are the following awards: the Prix Tropiques (1991)28 (Tropics Prize), renamed prix littéraire de l’Agence Française de Développement (AFD; literary prize of the French Development Bureau) in 2011 and since 2014 known as prix Littérature Monde/AFD (announced before the festival Etonnants Voyageurs); the prix Réseau France Outre-mer (RFO) du livre (1995–2011; Book Prize of the French Overseas Broadcasting Company); the prix des cinq continents de la francophonie (2001; Prize of the Five Continents of Francophonie), awarded by the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie; the prix Ahmadou Kourouma (2004) awarded at the International Book and Press Fair in Geneva, Switzerland; and finally, the Prix Senghor (2006) honoring a francophone debut novel.29 Some awards emphasize a theme, such as development, or honor any extra-hexagonal francophone author, such as the prix Littérature Monde/ AFD; others reward exclusively sub-Saharan writers (the prix Ahmadou Kourouma); and certain prizes seek out original new talent (the prix des cinq continents de la francophonie and the prix Ahmadou Kourouma). Finally, some laureates are selected by non-specialists, such as the prix Ouest-France Etonnants Voyageurs determined by young readers between the age of fifteen and twenty.30 Along with the Renaudot prize, featured four times on the bar chart, and the prominence of francophone/African prizes since 2000, other (largely minor) French prizes are also conspicuously prevalent during the first decade of the new millennium, although it must be added that the accumulation of prizes for the same work tends to skew the overall picture of recognition for the corpus narratives. For instance, Dark Heart of the Night by Léonora Miano was awarded five French prizes in 2005 and 2006.31 Despite the lack of luster attached to these minor prizes, it is noteworthy that Miano’s second

110

Chapter 3

novel, Contours du jour qui vient (Plon 2006)—that was not translated into English, possibly in part due to the controversy aroused by the foreword to the English translation of Miano’s first novel—won the esteemed prix Goncourt des lycéens in 2006. The accumulation of less reputed prizes as a “precursor effect” to a more illustrious award for a subsequent novel is equally apparent with respect to Mabanckou’s novels Broken Glass (Editions du Seuil 2005) and Memoirs of a Porcupine (Editions du Seuil 2006). After the former garnered several francophone prizes (the prix des cinq continents de la francophonie, the prix Ouest-France Etonnants Voyageurs and the prix RFO) and was short-listed for the prix Femina as well as runner-up for the prix Renaudot—it lost by one vote to Nina Bouraoui’s Mes mauvaises Pensées in 2005—Mabanckou’s following novel, Memoirs of a Porcupine, was awarded the prix Renaudot in 2006, solidly establishing Mabanckou’s literary reputation, not only in France but also on the Anglo-American market. In 2017, his eighth novel, Black Moses, appeared in an English translation, and was longlisted for both the 2015 Goncourt Prize and the distinguished Man Booker International Prize in 2017.32 Fetishized texts or oeuvres of successful authors inevitably usurp a relatively large portion of the literary field in which texts compete for space, rendered visible as media presence, be it in the written press, on the internet or on the air. Thus, one could argue that these texts establish an unfair hegemony since symbolic value in the form of literary awards accrued by one text or oeuvre considerably reduces the chance of recognition of work by unknown new talents. At work is the so-called Matthew effect, the counterpart of the Matilda effect, mentioned above.33 The phenomenon of success breeding success is well known in the publishing field where the conversion of symbolic into journalistic capital has gained increasing prominence. This “cumulated advantage” or what Thompson describes as “a winner-takes-more market” (391) often continues to play a constitutive part on the Anglo-American book market in the form of translation grants or awards for foreign fiction, as will be discussed in the next section. ANGLO-AMERICAN TRANSLATION AWARDS/ GRANTS AND FOREIGN FICTION PRIZES Publishing translated literature remains a risky business since extra costs are incurred for the purchase of the rights and the remuneration of the translator as well as for editorial work and promotion of the foreign writers and their texts. Editors frequently refuse to accept a translation project without the prospect of financial assistance and large publishing houses are particularly reticent to invest in foreign literature that is unlikely to yield impressive print

Literary Awards for Minority Authors

111

runs. It is generally the smaller publishers that seek financial aid from a host of different sources and publish translations. Apart from the private endowments and foundations that provide financial support for translation, the French state—mainly via the Cultural Services of the French Embassy—and the Arts Council England also play a role in the dissemination of Frenchlanguage literature in translation in an Anglo-American context (Sapiro, “Les échanges littéraires” 27–29).34 Before examining in greater detail the most important translation awards/ grants and foreign fiction prizes relevant to our corpus, we must consider the specific aspects of the text that are valued and underscored by a given translation prize. Matthew Reynolds, who for several years acted as a judge for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, notes as follows the various elements that are considered in the prize and comments on them:35 “The quality of the translation, the importance of the original work and the value of its being put into English.” The criteria triangulate and qualify each other. What counts is not only the imaginative force of the work as brought into English, but what one might call the translation event—the feeling this book should matter particularly to us, in the UK, now. (65)

In other words, notwithstanding the quality of the translation as the “paramount criterion”—after all, the Oxford-Weidenfeld prize goes entirely to the translator—consecration of the translators and their work by this specific translation award depends partially on the status of the original text as well as on its relevance (timeliness) at the moment of publication in the foreign publishing field. Different translation prizes emphasize different qualities of the text or its production circumstances. For instance, in the case of the PEN Promotes award—part of the English PEN’s Writers in Translation program that supports the promotion of literature in translation—it is the ideological message of the translated work that determines financial support. The PEN Promotes award aims to celebrate “books of outstanding literary value, dedication to free speech and intercultural understanding, which have a clear link to the PEN Charter.”36 Furthermore, while the International (formerly IMPAC) Dublin Literary Award, presented annually for a novel written in English or translated into English, focuses on the quality of the target text aiming “to promote excellence in world literature,”37 the judges of the National Translation Award presented by the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) pride themselves on awarding “the only prize for a work of literary translation into English to include an evaluation of the source text.”38 The variety in emphasis of the different prizes is also reflected in the diversity of awardees/grantees receiving the monies. While authors are in

112

Chapter 3

general the beneficiaries of literary awards—albeit boosting at the same time the economic and symbolic capital of their publishers, editors and literary agents—translation prizes and grants may recompense a range of agents involved in the production of the translated text. For example, the Translation Prize awarded by the French-American Foundation39 attributes 100 percent of the reward to the translator, while the author and translator each receive an equal share from the Independent Foreign Fiction Award40 and the Best Translated Book Award.41 (For details on each award/grant, see Appendices 4, 5, and 6—tables A, B, and C.) By contrast, the French Voices Award42 favors the publisher, recipient of two-thirds of the monetary prize, allocating the remaining one-third to the translator. Surprisingly, the first American prize to acknowledge “the art of the literary translator,” the PEN Translation Prize created in 1963, is not awarded to the translator but to the author of the winning book-length work of literary fiction.43 Finally, the allocation of some prize monies is prescribed in great detail, as in the case of the Grand prize winner of the French Voices Awards which dictate the inclusion of a preface and provides the possibility of an author book tour in the United States. It is evident that the prestige attached to the various translation awards/ grants and foreign fiction prizes as well as their impact on publicity and book sales vary hugely, as is the case for literary prizes. The most eminent prizes feature chiefly in the category of awards consecrating any-languageto-English translations (Appendix 5—table B), as opposed to the subset French to English translations (Appendix 4—table A). In terms of prize money, the International Dublin Literary Award with its total remuneration of €100,000—in case of a translated winner, 75 percent is granted to the author and 25 percent to the translator—occupies the top rung.44 The annually changing international jury of this prestigious award, created in 1996, selects the best novel among a competitive list of not only translated fiction but also English-language novels. Future literary Nobel winners, such as Orhan Pamuk and Herta Müller, were among the luminaries of this very competitive excellence in world literature award. However, confronted with one less obstacle to overcome—that is, translation—original Englishlanguage texts are privileged with respect to translated texts and consequently dominate the list of laureates and finalists.45 The second award on this list, the Man Booker International Prize—described as “the most generous prize for a work of translated literature” (Shaffi) by its administrator Fiammetta Rocco—awards £50,000 to a translated work of fiction to be shared equally by the author and the translator.46 Recognition of the translator’s role in the “survival” of the literary text in the form of half of the total monetary award, that is £25,000, in addition to the media attention spawned by the prestigious prize, raises the profile of the translated work and its author considerably. Journalistic capital will no doubt also be accrued in the case of a new

Literary Awards for Minority Authors

113

critically acclaimed translation of a classic work, such as Flaubert’s Madame Bovary by Lydia Davis published in 2010 (Viking/Penguin Group) with a special mention of the French-American Foundation Translation Prize on its cover. Unfortunately, most award and grant-winning translators receive only between £1,000 (the Scott Moncrieff Prize for French translation47) and £5,000 (the Independent Foreign Fiction Award), including usually a mention of the award/grant inside or on the cover of the book. GENDER DIVERSITY AND MINORITY REPRESENTATION IN TRANSLATION AWARDS/ GRANTS AND FOREIGN FICTION AWARDS In spite of the heterogenous nature of the main translation awards/grants and foreign fiction prizes acting as accrediting vehicles for French-language narratives in the Anglo-American book market, certain prevailing trends regarding gender diversity and minority representation—including the recognition of our corpus narratives—are noteworthy. As will be illustrated, representation among these laureates of, on the one hand, female writers and translators and, on the other hand, minority authors, has undergone a substantial development in recent decades (see Appendix 6—table C). In regard to the participation of women, all of the translation awards created before the turn of the millennium (the PEN Translation Prize, the Scott Moncrieff Prize for French Translation, the FACE Translation Prize, the Independent Foreign Fiction Award and the National Translation Award) sorely lack gender diversity, female writers accounting on average for 14 percent. This observation is in keeping with developments described above regarding female representation among the laureates of the Goncourt, the Renaudot and the Nobel Prize literature in the course of the twentieth century. However, the paucity of female authors is compensated in the case of some prizes by the acknowledgment of female translators to almost the same degree as (or greater than) their male counterparts. It must be noted that numbers available for female representation within the profession of literary translation as a whole generally reveal a gender balance or even female majority48 (which more or less reflects the contribution to our corpus narratives by women translators who prevail overall with 57 percent, a percentage that has increased to 61 percent since 2000.49) A focus on specific translation prizes discloses that 47 percent of translators recognized by the Scott Moncrieff Prize are female; this percentage rises to 50 percent for the Independent Foreign Fiction Award and to 51 percent for the Translation Prize awarded by the French-American Foundation. One could argue that since the recipients of these three prizes are the translators—in

114

Chapter 3

case of the Independent Foreign Fiction Award, the translator receives 50 percent instead of the full prize, and in case of the other two the translator is awarded 100 percent—women receive their share of credit. Furthermore, although recognition of female authors remains low even after 2000 (except by the Scott Moncrieff Prize [53 percent] and to a certain extent by the Best Translated Book Award [40 percent])50 at least female translators from then on dominate with percentages above fifty, thus reflecting more or less the total number of women active in the field of literary translation (Appendix 6—table C).51 With respect to the representation of minority writers publishing in French, a similar pattern emerges as for female author representation in the case of some long-established translation awards. For instance, the enthusiasm of the Scott Moncrieff Prize for the translation of minority authors since approximately 2000 is all the more striking insofar that prior to this watershed year this prize consecrated almost exclusively translations of work by renowned Franco-French, mainly white, dead, male luminaries (such as Bourdieu, Perec, Sartre, etc.).52 It is noteworthy that mostly juries of awards that evaluate any translation into English—as opposed to solely French to English translations—reward a disproportionately large percentage of minority authors of French-language texts: the International Dublin Literary Award puts 50 percent of minorities in French as laureates in the spotlight and 64 percent of shortlisted texts;53 in the case of the PEN/Heim Translation Fund,54 the English PEN Promotes and PEN Translates this percentage amounts to 56 percent;55 and finally, the French Voices Grant Award has selected 75 percent minority French laureates. These percentages seem particularly high when compared to the 22 percent for the minority Goncourt winners and the 33 percent for the minority Renaudot laureates (since 2000). In view of their aim to promote books dedicated to underrepresented writers, literary diversity and intercultural understanding, it is nonetheless not surprising that the PEN/Heim Translation Fund, the English PEN Promotes and PEN Translates grants present a high percentage of minority authors writing in French. It is the award-granting institutions established since 1990—and to an even greater extent those created since 2005—that begin to acknowledge our corpus narratives in the form of translation awards and grants. Since 2006, novels by Mabanckou, Mukasonga, Waberi, and Mwanza Mujila appear as finalists for the International Dublin Award,56 the Man Booker International Prize, the Best Translated Book Award, and the Albertine Prize.57 However, it is the French Voices Award that since 2006 has acknowledged most prominently authors of sub-Saharan origin (Waberi, Gatoré, Miano, Mwanza Mujila, and Mabanckou), while the Grand Prize Winner of the French Voices Award, since its creation in 2014, has been bestowed three times on minority authors and twice on corpus narratives, not surprisingly two Gallimard-published

Literary Awards for Minority Authors

115

authors and Renaudot winners: in 2014 to Mukasonga’s Our Lady of the Nile and in 2015 to Mabanckou’s The Lights of Pointe-Noire.58 Several aspects of the French Voices Award must be underscored in this context. First of all, a prerequisite for the award is that the sample translation submitted to the literary selection committee comes from a book that has been published in France in the previous six years. This requirement for eligibility is understandable in view of the fact that the Cultural Services of the French Embassy support the award. Yet it also entails the ineligibility of any francophone sub-Saharan narrative originally published outside France.59 Second, the award stipulates that the sum assigned to the publisher be spent on providing a preface. The preface or introduction as part of the paratext conditions the reception, and may even lead to a controversy, as shown above in the example of Miano’s novel Dark Heart of the Night. Be that as it may, the French Voices Award is the first award created in the United States for French-English translations to honor a significant number of minority authors, including those represented in our corpus, all within a relatively short period of time. It must also be stressed that the large number of translations supported each year by this award—ranging between seven in 2006 and fifteen in 2009—contrasts sharply with the earliest “traditional” French to English translation awards that for decades selected only one awardee per year. In the first twelve years of its existence (2006–2017), the French Voices Award supported 130 translations—increasingly nonfiction—of which seventeen (13 percent) were authored by minority writers (including five authors of our corpus narratives). Since 2005, following the trend of overall inflation in literary prizes, there has been a sharp increase in the number of translation awards and grants in the category of any-language-to-English translations as well as that of French to English translations. This proliferation of translation grants and awards is no doubt yet another response to the increasing asymmetry within the world system of languages where English dominates as a hyper-central language on the extraduction side, the volume of exported translations. The “three percent”—a percentage that has been inching up by fractions in recent years (Anderson, “Nielsen Reports”)—of translated books published on the Anglo-American market has led to outcries of dismay by scholars, translators and the small-scale and university publishers who are almost solely responsible for the dissemination of literature in translation: “If we consider the language of origin as an indicator, linguistic and cultural diversity is almost nonexistent at the mass-market end of publishing, where (. . .) English has a virtual monopoly,” warns Sapiro (French Literature 313). Concentration and rationalization of the publishing industry focused on short-term profits have relegated most of translated fiction to small-scale and university presses, as was illustrated in chapters 1 and 2. French-language literature that occupied

116

Chapter 3

a hegemonic position in the world literary field until the 1970s has seen its share in translated literature globally fall to 7.7 percent in 2004 while the share of translation from English worldwide increased to 66 percent (Sapiro, French Literature 311).60 Similarly, English-language titles have become progressively more popular in France in recent decades.61 These developments have not only led to growing support by the French government for the extraduction of French literary texts—via the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the Centre National du Livre—but also in the United States via the National Endowment of the Arts that grants literature translation fellowships and by award-granting foundations that raise the stature of the translators and their work in the public eye. It is particularly by the recently established translation grants that our corpus narratives are recognized, although, not surprisingly, they also receive accolades from institutions that support any-language-to-English translation in order to promote “literary diversity” and “intercultural understanding,” such as the American and English PEN awards mentioned above. It is equally clear from the consecrated titles of corpus narratives that certain recipient author names dominate the literary translational field, in particular the two Gallimard-published Renaudot winners: Mabanckou and Mukasonga. This selection corroborates once more the postulate of the “winner-takes-more market”—and the Matthew effect—where the same names monopolize the list of grantees and awardees. Within this field texts compete for their position by accumulating symbolic, social and economic capital. Literary works accrue symbolic capital via translation awards and grants awarded by institutions and government agencies: the more some accrue, the less visible others will remain. In the hierarchy of awards, the more prestigious (translation or foreign fiction) award may even usurp the less illustrious prize, in the process generating added journalistic as well as economic capital.62 A forceful point made by the numerical evidence mentioned above concerns the lack of gender parity of the translated authors who are recognized and supported on the Anglo-American book market.63 Even among the most recently established grants and awards, such as the PEN/Heim Translation Fund, the French Voices Award, the English PEN Promotes and PEN Translates, women authors are still woefully underrepresented (whereas in the same period overall minority representation improved considerably). The mere 23 percent of corpus narratives authored by sub-Saharan women writers—a low percentage due in part to their belated emergence, as will be discussed in chapter 4—are even less frequently featured among the texts awarded translation grants and awards. Apart from Mukasonga’s awardwinning novel and its English translation that has accumulated literary as well as translation prizes, Miano is the only other female author represented

Literary Awards for Minority Authors

117

in our corpus whose work earned a translation award. Both women authors live and work in France. Restrictions for eligibility for these prizes, such as the requirement of publication in France, may constitute an additional impediment for women writers who possibly lack the mobility of their male counterparts. We must nevertheless bear in mind a crucial fact already mentioned in the introduction to this chapter: female writers overall occupy a minor position within the iniquitous literary field, or to speak with Ducas: “It is still a handicap to be female: even when women writers have overcome the first obstacle, that is, publication, and even when they publish a great deal, they are less well equipped to maintain a leading role on the literary scene. [. . .] our study illustrates that women authors who have an equal literary production [to men] are more readily eliminated, and as a result they fail to receive the coveted consecration by a hair’s breadth” (“Le prix Femina” 84).64 Delphine Naudier is more specific in holding the institutions and their standards accountable for the lack of consecration of female writers: “Whether we consider the functioning of literary institutions or the production of aesthetic norms and values, female writer is never equal to male writer” (6).65 In a related vein, invoking Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production, Toril Moi remarks that although there is no such thing as “gender capital” in an evolving relational field, “under current social conditions and in most contexts maleness functions as positive and femaleness as negative symbolic capital” (“Appropriating Bourdieu” 1036; emphasis added). With respect to the female tradition in American literature, in Jury of Her Peers, Elaine Showalter holds women’s relation to the literary marketplace as partially responsible for their underrepresentation in literary production, although she also blames pressure on women to lead private rather than public lives as well as women’s conformism to cultural norms and expectations (xv). Yet despite Showalter’s optimism regarding women’s participation as writers, critics, reviewers and publishers within the American literary establishment during the 1980s boom of feminist writing, the literary gender imbalance remained significant. Since translations are embedded within the hierarchized literary field and its institutions, it is not surprising that they are equally affected by this asymmetry. In 2016, only 26 percent of overall translated fiction into English represented female-authored books, according to Kate Derbyshire, whereas the gender balance among translators is roughly equal. She adds that “translated novels by female writers are the palomino unicorns of the publishing world— not just unusual, but a small subset within a subset,” following the announcement of the longlist for the high-profile Man International Booker Prize 2016 that included only four women writers on a list of thirteen (while reaching a gender balance with eight women translators).66 In line with the observations by Ducas and Naudier above, Derbyshire ascribes this imbalance to editors’

118

Chapter 3

paucity of recognition of translated female authors who, until recently, also suffered from the editors’ preference for “cerebral literary” novels that are mainly male-authored, though this trend seems to be changing. Earlier research in German-speaking countries confirms these findings: examining the recognition by translation awards and grants in Germany and Austria between 1986 and 1994, Dagmar Archan found that 61 percent were received by male translators and 39 percent by female translators whereas approximately 64.5 percent of translators were female in Germany, rising to 77.6 percent in Austria. Although Archan attributes the greater recognition of male translators to their efficiency in professional networking (“relational capital” in Bourdieusian terms) that allows them to be nominated and selected more frequently for translation grants and awards than their female counterparts, she nevertheless emphasizes that there is no reason to assume that men are the better translators. As in other professions, at some point in their career women seem to hit a glass ceiling while men continue to accumulate symbolic capital (81–82). RECENT EFFORTS TO REMEDY GENDER IMBALANCE IN TRANSLATION In the past decade, as a response to this gender disparity in the recognition of literary production and translation, initiatives have burgeoned in various literary spheres in an attempt to redress the imbalance. Awareness has finally led to action that has intensified since the mid-2010s. Research in this domain frequently starts simply with counting. In 2009, VIDA—Women in Literary Arts, “a non-profit feminist organization committed to creating transparency around the lack of gender parity in the literary landscape”67—began to tally gender disparity in major literary productions and book reviews in the United States, while in Australia the Stella Count started assessing the extent of gender biases in the field of book reviewing in 2011.68 Yet another initiative was taken by the blogger Meytal Radzinksi who launched the Women in Translation Month in August 2014 in order to promote women writers from around the world writing in other languages than English, as well as encourage the discussion about their writing.69 No doubt inspired by recent counts, Chad Post, the initiator of the “Three Percent” website, “ran the numbers” of women translators in the Translation Base for the decade 2008–2018, resulting in a disappointing 28.7 percent (Abrams, “Women in Translation Month”). Concurrently, special literary prizes have been created for women novelists, such as Le Prix de la Closerie des Lilas in France in 2009 which recognizes women’s literature70 and the Stella Prize that has celebrated

Literary Awards for Minority Authors

119

Australian women’s fiction and nonfiction writing since 2013 with a $50,000 reward.71 In a similar vein, in the United Kingdom, two publishing houses, Les Fugitives and Calisi Press, were established that publish solely women writers in translation, while a third, And Other Stories, committed to exclusively publishing women in the year 2018 (Flood). In order to counteract the gender imbalance in translated literature the first Warwick Prize for Women in Translation appeared in 2017. It was awarded to a work of fiction, nonfiction, poetry or a work of fiction for children or young adults authored by a woman.72 Furthermore, albeit not an all-female prize, the TA (Translators Association) First Translation Prize (United Kingdom), founded by an award-winning translator, Daniel Hahn, and launched in 2018 for first-time translators, shortlisted five female authors and translators out of a total of six nominations.73 Likewise, among some of the existing prize and grant juries, the shortfall in female representation has finally not only been acknowledged but also to a certain extent remedied. For instance, in 2017 the PEN Promotes website announced expressly that women authors and translators made up more than half of the award winners74 and the 2019 Man Booker International Prize included on its shortlist five women authors and six women translators (Anderson, “Five Women Authors”). Coincident with these attempts to rectify the gender imbalance in the translational as well as literary domain, the promotion and celebration of fiction (and nonfiction) in translation as an overall category seem to have gained some traction in recent years. The growing number of translation awards and grants created since 2000, as well as a reconfiguration of some earlier consecrating institutions, are an indication of this progress. Ironically, a global political climate of rising isolationism potentially increases the popularity of translated literature. In a “Brexitian” United Kingdom, the “outdated” 3 percent of translated books into English has, in fact, risen a few notches in recent years, resulting in an increase to more than 5.6 percent of translated fiction in the United Kingdom in 2018 (Anderson, “Nielsen Reports”). In a similar vein, Laurence Marie, Cultural attaché and Head of the Book Department at the French Embassy in New York City, announced optimistically in 2014 that French translations have sold better than ever in recent years. Contemporary French-language minority writers feature prominently on the lists of translated texts and are recognized increasingly, as we have seen, not only by way of Franco-French literary awards but also English translation awards and foreign fiction prizes. Translated literature contributes to cultural understanding across linguistic barriers that is even more relevant in a time when it is crucial to find solutions for refugee crises, the dilemma of mass migration and the battle against mounting xenophobia. Translation as a political act will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter giving prominence to the first generation of sub-Saharan francophone women writers. As will be shown, translators may advocate for certain categories of authors (of a specific gender or

120

Chapter 3

from a particular linguistic space) and ideologies (be it feminist, Marxist, etc.). They share their agency with among others the publishers, both in the original and in the Anglo-American literary field where the texts appear in translation. NOTES 1. Of course, one could challenge the “imprisonment” of female authors in their gendered subjectivity and their separation as a category from writers in general (similar to the question posed in the introduction apropos the “constrictive” epithets “African” and “sub-Saharan”). I would agree with Toril Moi who answers this question in her article “‘I am not a woman writer’” by asserting that this type of utterance is generally used in “response to a provocation” or as a “defensive speech act” within a sexist society (265). Furthermore, this approach permits us to render visible the “soft violence”—unrecognizable as such, but nevertheless often part of social practice in the form of sexual oppression—enacted by the wielders of symbolic power in the literary field (Moi, “Appropriating Bourdieu” 1022–23). On the literary scene, where women are still vastly underrepresented, as will be shown, highlighting their “gendered subjectivity” is the only way to create awareness of gender inequality. 2. Yet, newsworthiness translated into media attention and a boost in sales will not be sufficient to place these Nobel winners on bestseller lists, notes Sally-Ann Spencer (204). 3. In France, the Goncourt prize takes the lead in terms of book sales, followed by the prix Goncourt des lycéens (a prize awarded by high school students) with 334,000 copies sold, and the Grand Prix de l’Académie Française with 220,500. The Renaudot prize is in fourth position (See “Un prix Goncourt, c’est 400.000 ventes en perspective!”). The other important literary prizes awarded annually in fall are the prix Femina, the prix Interallié and the prix Médicis. In comparison, the supplementary sales from the American Pulitzer Prize for Fiction seem more unpredictable than those for the Goncourt winner: for instance, numbers vary between 914,000 in 2009 and 1,441,000 in 2007. Habash suggests that the Pulitzer “doesn’t have as much sway with the reading public as Oprah.” The more complex relationship between the Pulitzer and commercial success is also emphasized by James English: in the last three decades of the twentieth century only one of more than thirty winners obtained the status of bestseller (The Economy 331). A similar pattern is discernable with respect to the National Book Awards presented in the United States since the 1950s. 4. Whereas Ducas observes that the extravagant number of literary awards symbolizes one of the most typical “French exceptions” (La Littérature 5–6), English believes that “the cultural universe has become super-saturated with prizes” (The Economy 109) flooding the anglophone literary landscapes just as profusely. For a substantial list of French literary prizes, see http:​/​/www​​.lale​​ttred​​ulibr​​aire.​​com/?​​categ​​ or​y​/Palmarès-littéraires/page/4, Accessed March 4, 2019. 5. The term “journalistic capital,” coined by English, is according to Pickford increasingly “measured in terms of scandal, notoriety, and celebrity” (229).

Literary Awards for Minority Authors

121

6. For a detailed account of Batouala’s controversial Goncourt nomination see Iheanachor Egonu’s article “Le Prix Goncourt de 1921 et la ‘querelle de Batouala.’” The hostility expressed toward Maran’s novel must be fully attributed to political, racial and ideological motives, concludes Egonu (541). Maran’s sympathizers, however, “hailed it as an example of the new, properly ‘colonial novel,’ in which the distinct cultural character of the colonies was finally being given literary expression, and whose emergence should be celebrated by Parisian literary institutions” (English, The Economy 268). See also English (“Winning the Culture Game”) for details on the string of annual scandals surrounding the Booker Prize in the early 1970s. 7. See for instance chapter 2 “Online Readers in the Global Literary Marketplace” in Oana Sabo’s The Migrant Canon. On the celebretization of the author, see Juliet Gardiner. 8. Obviously there have been exceptions to this rule, such as Jean-Paul Sartre who refused the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964 or Julien Gracq, a reluctant laureate of the prix Goncourt in 1951 (Ducas, La Littérature 59). 9. See also Nathalie Heinich’s study (1999) regarding the effects of literary consecration on the author. 10. For detailed information on Mabanckou’s road to fame see Steemers “Liberation and Commodification.” 11. The concept of authorial agency challenges of course Bourdieu’s relational theory of the production of cultural value created within the literary field, since it allocates influence to the author capable of contributing to the creation of journalistic capital. 12. Created in 1903 as a literary heritage by the writer Edmond de Goncourt, the prix Goncourt is annually bestowed on the best fictional work of prose. As a reaction against the venerable Académie française that traditionally celebrated the lyrical genres of poetry and drama, the Goncourt initiated the consecration of prose writing, epitomized by the nineteenth-century realist and naturalist novel. For a detailed description of this literary prize see Ducas, La Littérature 30–42. 13. This portmanteau name was coined by the publisher Belfont (Cachin and Ducas 86). 14. In 2008, some rules were changed to increase the Goncourt jury’s impartiality: members can no longer be employed by publishers and must resign at the age of eighty (Pickford 233). 15. The prix Théophraste Renaudot was established in 1926 by ten journalists/literary critics who, forced to idle for hours while waiting near the Drouant restaurant in Paris for the announcement of the Goncourt winner on the first Monday of December, decided to create their own literary prize as a complement to as well as a reparation of injustices by the Goncourt (https://prixrenaudot​.free​.fr. Accessed February 20, 2019). 16. Of the total of 115 Goncourt laureates since 1903 (including Julien Gracq who refused the prize in 1953 and the controversial Romanian Vintila Horia who was never handed the prize in 1960) only thirteen (11 percent) were women and seventeen (15 percent) minority authors, keeping in mind that women from a minority background are included in both categories. See also the complete list of laureates

122

Chapter 3

at https​:/​/ww​​w​.aca​​demie​​gonco​​urt​.c​​om​/to​​us​-le​​s​-lau​​reats​​-p​rix​​-gonc​​ourt. Accessed February 25, 2019. Since 1980, the minority laureates include: Tahar Ben Jelloun (1987), Moroccan; Patrick Chamoiseau (1992), Martinican; Amin Maalouf (1993), Lebanese-born; Andreï Makine (1995), Russian-born; Jonathan Littell (2006), Franco-American; Atiq Rahimi (2008), French-Afghan; Marie NDiaye (2009) who has a Senegalese father; the Moroccan-born Leïla Slimani (2016). The four remaining female writers are: Marguerite Duras (1984); Pascale Roze (1996); Paule Constant (1998); and Lydie Salvayre (2014). 17. Since the novel did not appear in an English translation until 2018 (Season of the Shadow, translated by Gila Walker, University of Chicago Press/London: Seagull Press), it is not included in our corpus. 18. The Renaudot winners feature: Michel del Castillo (1981) born in Spain of a Spanish father; René Depestre (1988), Haitian; Michel Picouly (1999), Martinicanborn; Ahmadou Kourouma (2000), Ivorian; Irène Némirovsky (2004), Ukranianborn; Nina Bouraoui (2005) born in France of an Algerian father and who lived many years in Algeria; Alain Mabanckou (2006), Franco-Congolese; Tierno Monénembo (2008), Guinean-born; Scholastique Mukasonga (2012), Rwandese. The remaining female Renaudot laureates are Danièle Sallenave (1980); Annie Ernaux (1985); Raphaële Billetdoux (1985); Dominique Bona (1998); Martine Le Coz (2001); Virginie Despentes (2010); Delphine de Vigan (2015); and Yasmina Reza (2016). 19. Established during the colonial period in 1924, the Association des Ecrivains de Langue Française whose name, activities and goals have changed over the years, was originally supported financially by French institutions. Its goal was to provide support for writers from “peripheral” geographical spaces—that is, non-hexagonal French-language territory—in the face of the powerful Parisian publishers. Specific prizes are awarded per territory, such as the Caribbean, Belgium, and so on. For more details, see Ducournau, La Fabrique 185–194. 20. The label “Goncourt noir” was first used by Robert Cornevin in Le Magazine littéraire in 1983 (Ducournau, La Fabrique 183). 21. “Lorsque cette récompense est évoquée dans les milieux spécialisés, le ton alterne ainsi entre le dédain pour cette récompense et la reconnaissance de la justesse des choix littéraires exercés par son jury.” 22. Out of a total of seventy-one texts (including “mentions spéciales”) that were recognized, forty-five qualify as narratives according to our definition, while twentysix works belong to other genres, such as volumes of poetry, biographies or scholarly texts. Additionally, four prizes were awarded to our corpus authors, that is writers whose work is represented among the corpus narratives but who have been awarded the prize for their complete oeuvre and not for a single text, subsequently translated into English. These laureats are: Amadou Hampâté Bâ (posthumously, 1991), Ousmane Sembène (1997), Boubacar Boris Diop (2000) and Léonora Miano (2011). 23. The other two prize-winning titles, Bernard Nanga’s La Trahison de Marianne (1985) and Kitia Touré’s Destins Parallèles (1996), received little or no international exposure. Nanga’s novel was only translated into Slovenian; Touré’s work was not translated at all.

Literary Awards for Minority Authors

123

24. These include a variety of awards, among them the Prix Goncourt des lycéens, the Prix Charles Veillon, the Prix du Livre Inter, the Prix Marguerite Yourcenar, the Grand Prix de la Société des gens de lettres du premier roman, Les lauriers verts de la forêt des livres, the Prix Louis-Guilloux, the Prix Montalembert du premier roman de femme, the Prix René Fallet, the Prix Bernard Palissy, the Prix Amerigo Vespucci, and the Prix littéraire des droits de l’homme. 25. This category includes awards such as the Prix de la Francité awarded by the journal Etudes Françaises (Montreal), le prix de l’Académie Royale de Belgique, and the German LiBeraturpreis (a play on the words “liberation” and “literature”) that honors women writers from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Arab world. 26. Without dismissing the importance of local initiatives that recognize the work by African writers, these have been excluded from this study. Their legitimizing value remains sometimes difficult to establish and may even harm the reputation of the consecrated writer since they generally “honor” more effectively the awarding institution or state than the author in question (Ducournau quotes Cévaër in Ecrire 233). Placed in a delicate position, the laureate might then feel obliged to refuse the prize, as did Patrice Nganang—very critical of the Paul Biya regime—when offered the Cameroonian prix de la révélation (le Prix de l’excellence littéraire) in 2005 (Carré 122, note 6). Moreover, these local initiatives fail to generate repercussions beyond the nation’s or even continent’s borders, as is the case for minor French prizes. 27. Likewise, Ducournau notes that in the 1990s an abundance of cultural events and festivals focusing on contemporary African literature, but also on photography and cinema, are organized both in France and Africa. This coincides with a renewed interest for African literature by the mainstream French publishers (La Fabrique 158). 28. The year(s) in brackets indicate(s) the year of the prize’s creation or its existence. 29. The Prix Océans, created in 2012 and sponsored by Alain Mabanckou in partnership with babelio​.co​m, was only awarded twice, the first time to Mukasonga’s Our Lady of the Nile. Livre Hebdo. June 10, 2014. https​:/​/ww​​w​.liv​​reshe​​bdo​.f​​r​/pri​​x​-lit​​terai​​ res​/t​​ous​-l​​es​-pr​​​ix​/pr​​ix​-oc​​eans. Accessed March 4, 2019. 30. The prix Ouest-France Etonnants Voyageurs is not a specifically African or francophone prize but has recognized several works by African writers since its creation in 2005. For a detailed description of most of these African prizes, see Ducournau, Ecrire 232–38. 31. The five awards that Miano received for L’Intérieur de la nuit are: Les lauriers verts de la forêt des livres (Révélation), the prix Louis-Guilloux, the prix Montalembert du premier roman de femme (Miano was the first to be honored with the Montalembert prize, designed for the first novel by a female author, in 2006), the prix René Fallet and the prix Bernard Palissy. 32. Frequently consecration of an author’s novel by a high-profile literary prize leads to the translation, not only of subsequent literary works by the same author but also the translation of texts published prior to the writer’s rise to fame. For instance, Mabanckou’s novel Bleu Blanc Rouge (Présence Africaine, 1998) came out in an English edition in 2013 (Blue White Red, Indiana UP) once the French-Congolese

124

Chapter 3

author had received the Renaudot prize in 2006. Similarly, Mukasonga’s novels Inyenzi ou les Cafards (Gallimard, 2006) and La Femme au pieds nus (Gallimard, 2008) appeared in an English version after the Rwandan author received the Renaudot prize for Notre Dame du Nil, published in 2012: respectively, in 2016 (Cockroaches) and 2018 (The Barefoot Woman). Establishing a solid relationship with her publishers, Mukasonga’s original French texts were issued by Gallimard, and all three English translations by Archipelago Books. 33. Ducournau comments on this “virtuous circle” with respect to the recognition of francophone sub-Saharan authors in general, where a small group that has a slight advantage at the outset of their literary career accumulates modes of recognition (La Fabrique 313). 34. This study presents a selection of the most important awards and grants, but excludes financial support granted by the Centre National du Livre, the Hemingway Grant (Book Department of the French Embassy in the United States) as well as the Burgess Grant (United Kingdom) which are generally endowed with limited public visibility. 35. The Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize is awarded to book-length literary translations into English from any language (http:​/​/www​​.st​-a​​nnes.​​ox​.ac​​.uk​/a​​bout/​​the​-o​​xford​​-weid​​ enfel​​d​-tra​​​nslat​​ion​-p​​rize. Accessed March 5, 2019). 36. See the PEN Promotes website at https​:/​/ww​​w​.eng​​lishp​​en​.or​​g​/gra​​nts​/w​​riter​​s​ -in-​​​trans​​latio​​n. Accessed March 5, 2019. 37. http://www​.dublinliteraryaward​.ie. Accessed March 7, 2019. 38. See NTA website at https​:/​/ww​​w​.lit​​erary​​trans​​lator​​s​.org​​/awar​​ds​/na​​tiona​​l​-tra​​ns​ lat​​ion​-a​​ward. Accessed March 7, 2019. 39. The French-American Foundation with support of the Florence Gould Foundation was established in 1986 for the best fiction and nonfiction translation from French to English (http:​/​/fre​​ncham​​erica​​n​.org​​/tran​​slati​​o​npri​​ze. Accessed March 7, 2019). 40. The Independent Foreign Fiction Award was launched in the United Kingdom in 1990 by the British newspaper The Independent, and supported by funds from the Arts Council England and Champagne Taittinger to honor contemporary fiction in English translation. In 2016, this prize merged with the Man Booker International Prize. 41. The Best Translated Book Award was launched by the “Three Percent” website of the University of Rochester (United States) in 2007. The fiction shortlists and longlists feature minority writers and several of our corpus narratives. Although no laureate translated from the French was presented, nineteen French to English translations are included in the shortlists and five by authors from a minority background. http:​/​/www​​.roch​​ester​​.edu/​​Colle​​ge​/tr​​ansla​​tion/​​three​​​perce​​nt/. Accessed March 8, 2019. 42. As one of the specific French to English translation awards, the French Voices Award was created in 2006 by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the PEN American Center with support of the French-American Cultural Exchange (FACE), the Florence Gould Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The French Voices Awards can be given to titles whose rights have not yet been bought by

Literary Awards for Minority Authors

125

an American publisher. However, in that case, the monetary amount is granted only after a publisher has agreed to actually publish the book. (Personal correspondence with the Book Department of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy on March 7, 2016.) For more details on the awards see the website http:​/​/fac​​e​-fou​​ndati​​on​.or​​g​/ fre​​nch​-​v​​oices​/. Accessed March 5, 2019. 43. This prize was known until 2008 as the PEN-Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize. See website of the PEN America: https​:/​/pe​​n​.org​​/lite​​rary-​​award​​/ pen-​​trans​​latio​​n​-pri​​​ze​-30​​00/. Accessed March 5, 2019. 44. Before 2015, the name of the award, International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, reflected co-sponsorship by the American Productivity Company IMPAC. Currently, the award is solely funded by the Dublin City Council (http://www​.dublinliteraryaward​.ie. Accessed March 5, 2019). 45. A second element that sets this literary prize apart from most other literary awards is the nominating body: these are public libraries “worldwide” that can nominate up to three novels each year. Yet although the organizing institution, Dublin City Libraries, asserts to “actively seek out and encourage nominations from countries who have not previously nominated books for the award” Western libraries prevail on the list while libraries in Africa and Asia are scarce. For the complete lists of nominating libraries, see http://www​.dublinliteraryaward​.ie/. Accessed March 5, 2019. 46. As from 2016, the Man Booker International Prize which aims to support “more publishing and reading of quality fiction in translation” is awarded annually on the basis of a single book (https​:/​/th​​emanb​​ooker​​prize​​.com/​​inter​​nat​io​​nal. Accessed March 7, 2019). Two corpus narratives have been longlisted for this award: in 2017, Mabanckou’s novel Black Moses translated by Helen Stevenson, and in 2016 Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila, translated by Roland Glasser. Previously, the Man Booker International Prize, founded in 2005, recognized bi-annually a living writer for his or her full body of work in English or in English translation. Candidates for the prize are suggested by former judges and winners of the Man Booker and Man Booker International Prizes, not by publishers. Of the past winners, two were translated into English: the Albanian Ismail Kadare (2005) and the Hungarian Lászlo Kraszanahorkai (2015). The other English-language winners were Chinua Achebe from Nigeria (2007), the Canadian Alice Munro (2009), Philip Roth (2011), and the American short story writer and translator Lydia Davis (2013). 47. The Scott Moncrieff Prize for French Translation, launched in 1965 in the United Kingdom, is the earliest translation award specifically created for translations from French to English (https​:/​/ww​​w​.soc​​ietyo​​fauth​​ors​.o​​rg​/pr​​izes/​​trans​​latio​​n​-pri​​zes​/s​​​ cott-​​moncr​​ieff. Accessed April 7, 2019). 48. In 2016, Kate Derbyshire believes there exists roughly an overall gender balance, at least in the United Kingdom. This is confirmed by numbers from the Three Percent Database in the United States, published on the blog Women in Translation (https​:/​/wo​​menin​​trans​​latio​​n​.tum​​blr​.c​​om​/po​​st​/13​​20184​​54477​​/wit-​​is​-no​​t​-onl​​y​-int​​erest​​ ed​-in​​​-the-​​stats​​-for-​​women​. Accessed August 19, 2020.) However, Archan’s research in Germany and Austria reveals much higher percentages of female translators in the

126

Chapter 3

1980s and 1990s: 64.5 percent and 77.6 percent, respectively. See below for further discussion of Archan’s study. 49. Out of the 132 translators of our 118 original corpus narratives (some were translated by two translators, others were translated more than once), seventy-five were women. The gender of two translators could not be accounted for. 50. With only two rounds of awards, the Man Booker International Prize fails to present representative data. 51. Mention must also be made of the increase in the number of annual beneficiaries per prize awarded since the early 2000s. The Scott Moncrieff Prize awards runners-up since 2006, the Translation Prize by the French-American Foundation has increased the number of awardees since 2001, and the PEN Translation Prize has mentioned its runners-ups since 2004. 52. Since 2000, the Scott Moncrieff prizewinners have included the Lebanese Amin Malouf in 2001, Dai Sijie (Chinese-French) in 2002; Milan Kundera (Czechborn) in 2003, the Ukrainian-born Nella Bielski (2005), and Boualem Sansal (Algerian) in 2015 (as well as a few runners-up and commended works.) (https​:/​/ww​​w​. soc​​ietyo​​fauth​​ors​.o​​rg​/Pr​​izes/​​Trans​​latio​​n​-Pri​​zes​/S​​​cott-​​Moncr​​ieff. Accessed March 5, 2019.) A similar pattern is visible in the case of the PEN Translation prize. Of a total of seventy-four PEN Translation prizes awarded between 1963 and 2017, eleven were awarded to French-language texts. Of the four minority writers, three writers were honored since 2000: the Haitian Lyonel Trouillot (2004), the Ukrainian-born Irène Némirovksy (2007) and Romain Gary (also known by the pen name Emile Ajar), born in Lithuania (2011). 53. Of the twenty-two laureates between 1996 and 2017, nine were translated, two from the French, of which one is the Franco-Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun who received the accolade in 2004 for his novel This Blinding Absence of Light. Among the titles translated from French on the shortlists minority authors dominate with seven out of eleven: the Lebanese Amin Malouf (2004); the Algerian Yasmina Khadra (2006 and 2008), the Russian-born Andreï Makine (2008 and 2015); the Moroccan Mahi Binebine (2015), and the Rwandese Scholastique Mukasonga (2016). One of our corpus narratives was shortlisted in 2013: Dirty Feet by Edem Awumey, an author originally from Togo but currently residing in Canada. 54. The PEN/Heim Translation Fund was established in 2003 by an endowment gift from Michael Henry Heim and Priscilla Heim in order to promote the publication of translated literature into English (https://pen​.org​/pen​-heim​-grants/. Accessed May 30, 2019). 55. See the PEN Translates website: https​:/​/ww​​w​.eng​​lishp​​en​.or​​g​/gra​​nts​/p​​en​-tr​​​ ansla​​tes//​. Accessed March 5, 2019. 56. Two of Mabanckou’s works featured among the finalists of this prestigious prize: one on its shortlist (in 2010, Broken Glass translated by Helen Stevenson) and one on its longlist (in 2013, Black Bazaar translated by Sarah Ardizzone). Hence, Mabanckou’s visibility increased to some extent, even though he did not receive part of the laureate’s £10,000 reward shared by the author and the translator. 57. The Albertine Prize, named after the French bookstore in New York and first awarded in 2017, recognizes “A reader’s choice award for best contemporary

Literary Awards for Minority Authors

127

French fiction in English translation” (https​:/​/ww​​w​.alb​​ertin​​e​.com​​/albe​​rtine​​-priz​​e​-201​​​ 7​-rou​​nd1/. Accessed March 13, 2019). The ten French literary works translated into English from which readers can choose are selected by Albertine’s staff. 58. One of the deleterious but probably unavoidable consequences of the Matthew effect is illustrated by the following incident: as the winner of the 2015 French Voices Grand Prize, Mabanckou was offered a U​.S​.b​ook tour which he did not accept for reasons that are unknown. (Personal correspondence with the Book Department of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy on March 7, 2016.) One can only conjecture, of course, that he would have accepted (or been able to accept) the tour if he had been a less celebrated and sought-after author. A possible solution for such unfortunate circumstances could be that the translator—Helen Stevenson has translated four of Mabanckou’s novels into English—completes the tour instead. Why not honor the translator, as happened in the case of Ann Goldstein? She translated into English the popular novels by Elena Ferrante, an Italian author whose identity is a closely held secret. In the absence of the author, it was Goldstein who welcomed a cheering crowd at the BookCourt bookstore in Brooklyn in September 2015 (Maloney D1). 59. Similarly, French-language books published outside France are unable to take advantage of services provided by the Bureau international de l’édition française (BIEF) and the French Publishers’ Agency (https​:/​/ww​​w​.bie​​f​.org​​/Qui-​​somme​​ s​-nou​​​s​.htm​​l. and https://www​.frenchrights​.com​/about​-us. Accessed May 30, 2019). Whereas the BIEF, established in 1873 and supported by the French government, assists French publishers with their exports worldwide, the French Publishers’ Agency in New York is a private organization founded in 1983 that selects books from French publishers and represents English-language rights. 60. Though (re)translations of French literary classics continue to flourish and influence this percentage favorably, as noted by Sapiro, “on the strength of its past prestige, French literature still boasts six of the fifteen most translated authors worldwide” (French Literature 311). Among the ten most popular writers are Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, Honoré de Balzac, Charles Perrault, Albert Camus and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. 61. If the numbers are impressive, they vary nonetheless from one study to the next, probably due to differences in definition of literature and books. In 2005, LivresHebdo reported that 42.7 percent of literature consisted of translated fiction while 73.8 percent of foreign literature was translated from English (Piault, “Littérature étrangère” 7). In 2016, Marie-Charlotte Damasco reports in Le Monde du Livre that since 2011 France has been the leading translator from other countries and cultures. According to “le rapport Assouline,” 17.4 percent of all books (not only literature) published are translated and 60 percent of all translated literature is translated from English (https://mondedulivre​.hypotheses​.org​/4645. Accessed May 30, 2019). 62. The accumulating effect of literary and translation awards in independent literary fields may lead to the effacement by the latest consecration of a previous recognition within a different linguistic and cultural field, as has been demonstrated by Sally-Ann Spencer. She presents the case of the interference of a foreign fiction prize awarded to a translated novel after consecration by a (source context) literary prize. The German Buchpreis was founded in 2005 and awarded annually on the eve of

128

Chapter 3

the Frankfurt book fair—the world’s largest trade fair for foreign rights—in order to draw attention beyond the national borders to authors writing in German. Modeled on “commercially powerful prizes” (Spencer 196) like the Booker and the Goncourt, its objective was to engender afterlives via translation at a strategically chosen moment in the year when the attention of international booksellers is focused on Germany. Julia Franck’s novel Die Mittagsfrau (2007) (translated in 2009 by Anthea Bell as The Blind Side of the Heart) was one of the laureates of the Buchpreis, a fact spelled out on strap lines on the book cover as well as in the advertising of all English editions. When, in 2010, Franck’s novel was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize this posterior accolade replaced the Buchpreis announcement on the American edition. Spencer concludes: This could be taken to indicate, and construct, the Buchpreis’s place in the awards hierarchy, but it also draws attention to the way in which the Buchpreis, as a mechanism to valorise German-language literature, has intersected in the English-language context with initiatives aimed at the promotion and celebration of fiction in translation—from new prizes and festivals to the recent growth in small publishers specialising in translated fiction, among them Europa Editions. (204; emphasis added)

63. One of the key findings of the Report by the United Kingdom Arts & Humanities Research Council (2014-2016) is formulated as follows: “Alongside questions about the diversity of national voices and of literary genres, male authors continue to dominate translated literature, raising questions about selection processes for translation (by publishers and other ‘gatekeepers,’ including translators) or for funding or promotion (by national and international organisations or competition juries)” (Chitnis et al.). 64. “La féminité demeure un handicap : même lorsque les écrivaines ont franchi le premier obstacle que représente la publication et qu’elles publient beaucoup, elles se révèlent moins aptes à tenir un rôle de premier plan sur la scène littéraire. [. . .] à production littéraire égale, notre étude atteste l’exclusion qui frappe plus volontiers les écrivaines et leur fait parfois rater sur le fil la consécration convoitée.” 65. “Qu’il s’agisse du fonctionnement des institutions littéraires ou de la production des normes et des valeurs esthétiques, écrivaine n’est jamais égal à écrivain.” Nevertheless, much progress has been made in female representation among executive posts in French publishing since the 1960s, and more evidently so since the 1980s (Snaije, “International Women’s Day 2019”). Women’s growing influence on the future of book publishing was celebrated during the London Book Fair in March 2019 where the First PublisHer’s dinner brought together some twenty women “making a difference in book business.” There was a consensus that in the book industry more women were needed in leadership roles (H. Johnson). 66. This observation is corroborated by a 2014–2016 report published by the Arts & Humanities Council in the UK: “Alongside questions about the diversity of national voices and of literary genres, male authors continue to dominate translated literature, raising questions about selection processes for translation (by publishers and other ‘gatekeepers,’ including translators) or for funding or promotion (by national and international organisations or competition juries)” (Chitnis et al. 2). 67. http:​/​/www​​.vida​​web​.o​​rg​/ca​​tegor​​y​/the​​​-coun​​t/. Accessed April 1, 2019.

Literary Awards for Minority Authors

129

68. https​:/​/th​​estel​​lapri​​ze​.co​​m​.au/​​the​-c​​ount/​​2015-​​stel​l​​a​-cou​​nt/. Accessed March 29, 2019. 69. https​:/​/ww​​w​.lit​​erary​​trans​​lator​​s​.org​​/blog​​/wome​​n​-tra​​nslat​​ion​-i​​nterv​​iew​-m​​​eytal​​ -radz​​inski​. Accessed March 27, 2019. 70. http:​/​/www​​.lale​​ttred​​ulibr​​aire.​​com​/2​​014​/0​​3​​/12/​​Palma​rès-d​u-Pri​x-de-​la-Cl​oseri​ e-des​-Lila​s. Accessed March 27, 2019. One earlier prize for women writers was created in 1996 in the United Kingdom, the Orange Prize for Fiction which later changed its name to Women’s Prize for Fiction (https​:/​/ww​​w​.wom​​enspr​​izefo​​rfict​​ion​.c​​o​.uk/​​ about​​​/hist​​ory. Accessed March 29, 2019). 71. https://thestellaprize​.com​.au​/about/. Accessed March 27, 2019. 72. https​:/​/wa​​rwick​​.ac​.u​​k​/fac​​/cros​​s​_fac​​/wome​​nintr​​​ansla​​tion. Accessed March 27, 2019. 73. https​:/​/ww​​w​.soc​​ietyo​​fauth​​ors​.o​​rg​/Ne​​ws​/Ne​​ws​/20​​18​/Ja​​nuary​​/TA​-F​​irst-​​Trans​​ latio​​​n​-Pri​​ze​-sh​​ortli​​st. Accessed March 29, 2019. 74. https​:/​/ww​​w​.eng​​lishp​​en​.or​​g​/tra​​nslat​​ion​​/3​​6774/​. Accessed March 29, 2019.

Chapter 4

Early Female Writing and Its Reception on the Anglo-American Book Market

While previous chapters focused on the role of agents and institutions involved in the overall production of francophone sub-Saharan narratives in English translation, this chapter foregrounds the women writers represented in the corpus, and more specifically, their pioneers. What early francophone sub-Saharan feminine voices did find their way into the Anglo-American/ global book market? Which aspects favored the integration of these particular texts within the “3 percent” of translations published in the United States and the United Kingdom, and, occasionally their assimilation into the canon of world literature? As posited in chapter 2, this market often privileged specific themes in sub-Saharan works, confirming (occasionally subverting) the prevalent images of their culture circulating in the West. The question is whether the analysis of the selection and presentation of our corpus along gender lines will reveal a bias in favor of a dominant ideology with respect to the representation of female authors and their writing by the agents involved in their (re)production. As discussed, it is generally posited that publication of a translation adapted to the ideology of the target culture will be accomplished more swiftly than in the case of conflicting beliefs and principles (Lefevere, Translating Literature 87; Venuti, The Scandals 159). Clearly, the socioeconomic and political circumstances of West African women in the late 1970s—when these female voices began to emerge on the literary scene— contrasted in a number of ways with the situation of Western women, many of whom, particularly in the academy, had begun to embrace the dominant Western feminist ideology. In what follows the focus will be on the bridging of this cultural gap by analyzing the essential roles played by specific agents of translation: the publishers and the translators of these texts. With respect to our entire corpus of narratives, we observe a wide discrepancy in the numbers of male and female writers represented: of a total 131

132

Chapter 4

of 118 texts, only 27 (23 percent) are authored by women.1 Obviously, this apparent dearth is primarily due to their belated emergence on the literary scene as women began publishing their earliest works in the 1970s, approximately half a century after René Maran’s Batouala first garnered attention within the French literary landscape.2 Previously mainly the object of writing and knowledge, West African francophone women finally become their producers. Referred to by some as their “coming into ‘voice’”3 or a “coming to writing” (Lee 64),4 or more aggressively a “taking of writing,” connoting a taking-up of arms (d’Almeida, Francophone 6),5 the metaphor most frequently used for this female burgeoning is the breaking or destroying (the emptiness) of silence (d’Almeida, Francophone, subtitle). At the same time, we must keep in mind that the belated arrival of these women on the public literary scene does not imply the complete absence of feminine writerly production—and female co-production—before the 1970s, as revealed by private archives and correspondence (Ducournau, La Fabrique 373). Nor should we forget the role played by women in the transmission of oral literature (Ducournau, Ecrire 453; d’Almeida, Francophone 5). The translations of this feminine writing began to reach the AngloAmerican book market in the early 1980s, leading to an important body of scholarly work dedicated to this topic, particularly in the following decade.6 Since it is beyond the scope of this study to explore in detail the reasons for the late burgeoning of African female literary talent, suffice it to mention here the two primary explanations that scholars generally concur on: first, colonial ideology, including the Christian teachings of subordination of the female to the male, and secondly, African traditions that strictly defined gender roles (d’Almeida, Francophone 5; Volet 14–17).7 Educational opportunities for a modest selection of young men who commonly started their instruction in the French colonial schools of their home country and subsequently continued their schooling in institutions of higher education in France created a generation of male novelists in the 1950s that firmly anchored the budding Frenchlanguage African literary canon. Their residence in France permitted such successful novelists as Mongo Beti, Ferdinand Oyono and Camara Laye, to take advantage of the Parisian publishing institutions (see chapter 1). As will be illustrated, the growing, albeit limited presence of small publishing houses on African soil in the 1960s and 1970s eventually contributed to the creation of circumstances conducive to the development of African feminine writing, laying bare the prerequisite for minimal material conditions governing book production. If the act of writing itself called for courage on the part of these women “coming to writing” that redefined their roles thus far fictionalized by male authors, the process of getting published was not less daunting for some of them. Emblematic in this respect are Thérèse Kuoh-Moukoury’s efforts to

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

133

publish her text Rencontres essentielles. She was one of the few African women pursuing her studies in the métropole during the 1950s, but spent thirteen years attempting to find a publisher. Even CLE, based in Cameroon, rejected the novel (Toman, Introduction xxiii). This book presented by Toman as “the first novel by a woman of sub-Saharan francophone literature” (Introduction, x)8 was finally made available in print in 1969 by the small Parisian publisher Adamawa (Toman, Afterword 219, note 12), albeit virtually unnoticed by critics and scholars. It was not until 2002 that its English translation appeared under the title Essential Encounters (MLA of America, New York).9 The five corpus narratives by Senegalese women writers published subsequently were all issued by Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines in Dakar.10 Before examining in more detail the important function played by this local African press in the emergence of feminine writing, let us consider the overall picture of the literary production by francophone African women writers. To this end we turn to Claire Ducournau’s thorough and extensive research on the African literary space as well as the recognition and consecration of francophone African writers in La Fabrique des classiques africains (2017).11 Ducournau establishes objective parameters according to their literary visibility in the form of lists that rank these authors that published at least two titles between 1983 and 2008. The lists classify African writers according to criteria such as their recognition by literary prizes, their citations in anthologies, reviews in prestigious literary journals, number of works translated, number of dissertations dedicated to them, and so on. Thus, from “literary visibility lists” Ducournau creates databases of 404 authors (writers mentioned on at least two visibility lists), 151 authors (those featured on at least six visibility lists) and 29 writers (whose name appears on 32 literary visibility lists that, additionally, take into account the number of their translated works as well as the number of theses dedicated to their work).12 The top twenty-nine authors include the following women: Calixthe Beyala in ninth position, Ken Bugul in sixteenth, Véronique Tadjo in seventeenth, Werewere Liking in twentieth, Aminata Sow Fall in twenty-third and Fatou Diome in last place (La Fabrique 312, table 6; 374). Among these female writers, who all feature in our corpus, the predominance of certain countries of origin, such as Senegal, Cameroon and Ivory Coast, is conspicuous, although it must be noted that these authors have all known transnational trajectories as well.13 Compared to our complete corpus narratives—that is, those translated into English—we observe a similar pattern with respect to country of origin of these female authors: Senegal is represented by eleven titles, Cameroon by seven, and Ivory Coast by four narratives (all by Véronique Tadjo). One noticeable absence from these lists is the name of Mariama Bâ who published her two novels before the period covered by Ducournau’s study.

134

Chapter 4

In the year of its publication, 1981, Bâ’s So Long a Letter was consecrated by the first Noma Prize which no doubt contributed to its widespread international exposure. This newly created literary prize (see chapter 3) was awarded to Bâ during her week-long attendance of the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany in October 1980 where she became “the representative and spokeswoman for all African literature.”14 According to Christopher Miller, it was the novel’s English-language translation and its publication by Heinemann Educational Books in the African Writers Series that eventually guaranteed its continued availability (Theories of Africans 287). Miller observes that an average print of a novel published by Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines ran at 3,000 copies, whereas Heinemann estimated that in 1990 around 20,000 (English) copies were in print of Mariama Bâ’s first novel, not including those issued by Virago Press in London in 1981 (Theories of Africans 287). Since 2000, availability of the French edition has evolved significantly: Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines du Sénégal (N.E.A.S.) issued its last edition of Bâ’s first literary work in 2002, while the Paris-based, small mainstream press Le Serpent à Plumes began publishing the popular novel in 2001 in its Motifs series, releasing its last impression to date in 2013. I will return later to other explanations for the novel’s popularity on the international, including the Anglo-American, book market. That material conditions govern these early feminine literary publications is demonstrated by the essential role played by Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines in Dakar during the 1970s and 1980s.15 82 percent (twenty-seven out of thirty-three texts) of all overall corpus production that emerged from West African publishers were authored by women, mainly in the 1970s and 1980s.16 After the inconspicuous publication in Paris of the first text by a francophone African woman—Rencontres essentielles by Thérèse KuohMoukoury, mentioned above—the next five titles in order of publication of our corpus by women writers were published by Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines: Aminata Sow Fall’s The Beggars’ Strike, Mariama Bâ’s So Long a Letter and Scarlet Song, Nafissatou Diallo’s A Dakar Childhood, Ken Bugul’s The Abandoned Baobab, and after a five-year interval followed Nafissatou Diallo’s Fary, Princess of Tiali. What is furthermore striking about these six early feminine narratives is that they received exposure to an anglophone readership in an English translation either before they were published in France (So Long a Letter, The Abandoned Baobab and The Beggars’ Strike) or they were never directly issued in the métropole at all (Scarlet Song as well as the two texts by Nafissatou Diallo) (table 4.1). On average their translation time lag amounted to less than five years (4.8)—increasing to almost five and a half years for all translated texts by African women writers—when, in fact, the overall average time lag for translation of our corpus narratives (male and female-authored) reached eight

135

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

Table 4.1  Overview of the Original Publications and English Translations of the First Six Francophone Sub-Saharan Corpus Narratives by Women

Text

Publication Publication by Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines Publication of in Dakar English Translation

Nafissatou Diallo, De Tilène au Plateau Aminata Sow Fall, La Grève des Bàttu Mariama Bâ, Une si longue Lettre

1975 1979 1980

Mariama Bâ, Le Chant écarlate

1981

Ken Bugul, Le Baobab fou

1982

Nafissatou Diallo, La Princesse de Tiali

1987

London: Longman (Drumbeat series), 1982 London: Longman African Classics, 1981 Ibadan (Nigeria): New Horn Press, 1981; London: Virago and Heinemann Educational 1981 London: Longman (African Classics), 1986 Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1991 Washington: Three Continents Press, 1987

Publication in France

Number of Other Translations

−

-

Le Serpent à Plumes (Motifs), 2001 Le Serpent à Plumes (Motifs), 2001

5 18

−

6

Présence Africaine, 2009 −

3 -

years in the 1970s and ten years in the 1980s. It can, therefore, be inferred that these early narratives by African female writers found their way into the Anglo-American book market within a relatively short time span after their original publication in comparison to those by their male counterparts. Two special cases must be underscored in view of their prompt consecration by the literary establishment. The translation rights for So Long a Letter were snatched up immediately after the original publication in French by foreign editors17—no doubt also as a result of its recognition by the Noma Prize and Mariama Bâ’s presence at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Secondly, The Beggars’ Strike appeared in an English translation only two years after its original French version. Sow Fall’s novel received the Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique noire and was also shortlisted for the Goncourt prize. As illustrated in chapter 3, literary prizes place texts in the limelight (according to the status of the prize), thus ushering in translation deals. Concurrent with the emergence of these female writers in francophone West Africa we witness a growing demand for female voices by specific

136

Chapter 4

anglophone reader constituencies. For centuries, the American literary canon had been determined by almost entirely male juries, editorial boards, and academic leadership posts that established authoritative critical judgments. This situation changed dramatically in the 1980s as a result of the emergence of feminist critique and the attention paid to female writers and reviewers (Showalter 467). In fact, feminism in the Anglo-American academy exploded, and the underrepresentation of female writing in the literary canon became the subject of feminist critique, while scholars of particularly American literature set out to (re)discover and reprint hundreds of lost and forgotten work by women authors. In this context, it is not surprising that Christopher Miller noted in 1990: “American instructors these days feel obliged to include women writers, whereas in Africa gender issues and women writers are given less attention” (Theories of Africans 288).18 Similarly, the British scholar and translator of French-language sub-Saharan and Maghrebi literature, Dorothy Blair, expressed her astonishment in a letter to Présence Africaine about the fact that Aoua Keita’s autobiography19 had not been translated into English, “given the growing interest for feminine African literature, in anglophone Africa as well as in the US and the UK.”20 Evidently, the advent of this new fiction by African women in the 1980s filled a niche in the production of a certain category of Anglo-American publishers. By contrast, the reception of African feminine writing on the French book market lacked the sense of urgency and enthusiasm displayed by certain segments of the Anglo-American book industry. Within French academic spheres a feminist critique of literature gained currency several decades later. As a possible explanation to the resistance in France against the revision of literary history from a feminist perspective, Bahar and Cossy (2003) suggest that French-language literature was too much tied up to national identity and the glory of metropolitan Francophonie, validated by the power of Franco-French institutions such as the Académie Française and the Francophonie summit, and I would add, against the backdrop of— at least until recently—a rigid and centralized education system. From an “archaeological” approach of individual women writers, French literary feminist critique gradually evolved into “a study of literary institutions that contribute to social and cultural reproduction” (Bahar and Cossy 5),21 that is, research on the critical reception, canon formation as well as the so-called “neutral” aesthetic criteria that structure literary discourses. This delayed interest by the French academy for literary feminist critique is also reflected in the indifference by the French book market for the early francophone African female voices that were belatedly or never published by a French publisher, as mentioned above. In this respect, Miller’s observation regarding the influence of the American book market is particularly relevant: “The American market for books exercises a certain power

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

137

over African literature, a power that has not been analyzed” (Theories of Africans 287). It is precisely this cultural power regarding the afterlives of francophone African feminine writing in the global literary space that is brought to the fore in the current chapter. Nonetheless, I would argue that this foreign influence was wielded essentially within the Western (AngloAmerican) metropolis. The variation in types of publishers that issued the English edition of the six titles mentioned above confirms once again the disparate picture of the anglophone emergence of the entire corpus in the 1980s, as presented in the second chapter of this study. The only three titles by francophone sub-Saharan feminine authors published by a prominent mainstream publishing company— Bâ’s Scarlet Song, Sow Fall’s The Beggars’ Strike, and A Dakar Childhood by Diallo—appeared in the Longman African Classics and Drumbeat series, and were all translated, not coincidentally, by Dorothy Blair. We will return later not only to the importance of the translators’ dedication to the promotion of a certain category of literature but also to their role as cultural mediator within and between transnational literary fields. Later feminine African writing is collectively disregarded by large mainstream publishers within the Anglo-American market. With respect to overall publication of feminine writing on the Anglo-American book market, educational presses—including Heinemann Educational Books, American university presses and the Modern Language Association of America Press—largely dominate with sixteen out of twenty-six translations, thus following the general trend as described in chapter 2. These educational presses catered first and foremost to a demand from the academy (albeit not exclusively), thus contributing to the formation of African literature from a global perspective.22 The presentation of the emerging African feminine writing by publishers to their readership, both in the original as in the foreign literary field, is the subject of the next section. In what fashion did these agents wield their editorial power in the paratextual “skin” of their published books? FEMININE WRITING AND ITS PARATEXT The liminal spaces of the book provide a range of paratextual opportunities that position the work in a linguistic and cultural field. In Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, Gérard Genette lays out a taxonomy of the paratext as a set of practices and discourses that perform various functions.23 A literary work rarely appears “in an unadorned state” (Genette, Paratexts 1)24 but is presented in its materiality as book with a paratext, a packaging.25 Predominantly in a textual form, these titles, epigraphs, introductions, promotional blurbs, and so on are often—especially since the second half of

138

Chapter 4

the twentieth century—accompanied by visual elements on the book cover. As a threshold (Genette), a beginning (Foucault), or a vestibule (Borges), the essentially editorial paratext aims to coax the potential reader into procuring or reading the book. On this threshold, the publishers exercise their editorial influence by attributing the first interpretation to the text, but by doing so they invariably restrict and/or orient the text, conditioning its reception for its potential reader constituency. In his insightful volume Packaging Post/ Coloniality. The Manufacture of Literary Identity in the Francophone World, Richard Watts builds on Genette’s architecture of the book as object and supplements the latter’s mainly synchronic study by diachronic research on the paratext in changing historical and cultural contexts. For this purpose, Watts borrows Mikhail Bakhtin’s term “chronotope,” denoting the interconnectedness of time and space that determines each paratext that shifts the interpretation of the text it frames. Watts argues that each text, and by extension each paratext, “addresses a culturally specific moment and a culturally specific readership, thereby projecting a singular version of the text through the lens of the chronotope.”26 He adds, “The text itself may remain unchanged, but this is largely irrelevant since the ‘text itself’ is a virtual construct; no one ever reads just the text itself. The reader’s experience is always mediated by the paratext, which registers and transmits the cultural specificity of the work and the moment of its reception” (14). Since no edition endures indefinitely, fresh interpretive paratexts will eventually mediate the text, not only across linguistic frontiers but also over time. In what follows, common themes and juxtapositions will be drawn out that are suggestive of more widespread trends of “new” feminine African narratives in their specific cultural contexts. The francophone paratextual framework of texts by the first generation of African female authors included in our corpus—as mentioned above, predominantly published by N.E.A. in Dakar—addresses primarily a local African readership. What stands out in the publisher’s presentation is the praise for the “ordinariness” of these women writers. Three out of the four authors are introduced not only as a professional but also as a mother, and, as if to emphasize their gender—a published woman author was a novelty in the late seventies in Dakar—in several cases a photo is provided on the back cover. Sow Fall is introduced not only as a professor of French literature but also as a mother who discovered her love for writing27 (back cover of the 1979 French edition of The Beggars’ Strike).28 On the back cover of the French edition of So Long a Letter, Mariama Bâ is portrayed as a member of several women’s associations, but also as an author who “likes to think of herself as ‘an average Senegalese woman’ and a homestay mother.”29 In the same vein, Nafissatou Diallo introduces herself in the foreword of A Dakar Childhood as follows: “I am not the heroine of a novel but an ordinary woman of this country, Senegal; a mother and a working woman—a midwife and

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

139

child-welfare nurse—whose home and career leave her very little free time” (emphasis added).30 Ostensibly, the N.E.A. editions are addressing a local African readership able to identify with the “ordinary” women authors who are represented thus and who, it appears, desire to be represented as such.31 These female pioneers and protagonists—whether (semi)autobiographical or fictional—echo Awa Thiam’s description of the women she interviews for her book La Parole aux négresses (1978)32 who narrate with simplicity their problems encountered “in daily life in their society” (22).33 Anglophone West African female writers show similar humility. In the late 1980s, the Nigerianborn author Buchi Emecheta described herself in comparable terms: “I am just an ordinary writer, an ordinary writer who has to write, because if I didn’t write I think I would have to be put in an asylum” (173), clarifying: “I write about the little happenings of everyday life. Being a woman, and African born, I see things through an African woman’s eyes” (175).34 Furthermore, both Diallo’s A Dakar Childhood and Bugul’s The Abandoned Baobab appeared in the series “Vies d’Afrique,” described by the publisher as “accepting only real-life stories that cannot include any imaginary aspects except for what the author deems an essential part of their cultural heritage.”35 The N.E.A. editor, Roger Dorsinville, disclosed that the “Vies d’Afrique” series was “open to nonprofessional writers” (148). Assuming this refers to a category of previously unpublished authors, it at least granted some pioneer female writers a chance to become known and be read. With this series, Dorsinville sought to promote a national (Senegalese) literature, a testimonial writing, not in the first place aimed at representing universal values, intended for a foreign, that is French readership. On the contrary, a Senegalese experience formed the basis for these “authentic” texts that were mostly presented either as autobiographies or veiled/semi-autobiographies.36 Those that are not pitched as autobiographical describe everyday life in Senegal during the 1970s and 1980s. In his preface to Diallo’s second text, Amadou Samb (a former advisor of the Department of Higher Education in Senegal) emphasizes its authentic nature: “This is not a work of the imagination, nor a purely literary exercise. Nafissatou strives to be a witness of a vibrant society, as seen from the inside. Not in the way sociologists, ethnologists or ethnographers approach it, but as everyday life” (Preface of La Princesse de Tiali).37 In her perceptive analysis of three early texts by African women writers, Hitchcott establishes a relevant link between the personal and the social, describing the role of these texts as “a forum or mouthpiece for giving voice to issues that are otherwise silenced by patriarchal social codes” (Women Writers 43). She emphasizes the texts’ function within their geo-historical context: “Although the texts do not promote change, they demonstrate the imbalance of social systems of exchange” (Women Writers 44). Likewise, d’Almeida attributes them a perfunctionary role: their authors focus attention on the lives of

140

Chapter 4

women.38 The recurrent theme of the realistic representation of Senegalese society in all its aspects is evinced by the paratext of the female-authored literary works under consideration. Traditions and culture, including their flaws and injustices, are exposed by these women writers. For instance, on the back cover of the French edition of So Long a Letter we read: “Each page, virtually each paragraph emphasizes an important aspect of Senegalese society whose cultural roots are unearthed, explaining behavior and attitudes.”39 Similarly, Sow Fall is praised in The Beggars’Strike’s paratext for her profoundly social inspiration that is corroborated in her novel by questioning a society that marginalizes the poor in favor of a minority at the top.40 The paratextual framework of the N.E.A. editions portrays these early female writers as simple, authentic and ordinary women, firmly anchored in their African reality. Yet, describing them as dealing with everyday life, including its challenges and imperfections, the editors fail to highlight specific feminine or feminist perspectives of this writing by African women. Implicitly, one could argue, these female voices typically distinguish themselves from the literary production by their male colleagues precisely by virtue of certain preferred subject matters, since the latter often gravitate toward more political themes such as the (former) abusive colonial regimes and corrupt post-independence African dictatorships. As will be demonstrated in the next section, the anglophone editorial frameworks of some of the feminine works discussed above tend to pursue a markedly different approach that is adapted to a metropolitan cultural field and reader catchment.

ANGLOPHONE PARATEXT AND RECEPTION: TO BE TRANSLATED OR NOT TO BE Mariama Bâ: So Long a Letter In contrast with the feminine writings published in their African (Senegalese) context focusing on the “ordinariness” of their female authors, the paratext of the English-language editions emphasizes the extra-ordinariness of these women. The back cover of the 1981 Virago edition of So Long a Letter, for instance, promotes the novel as “movingly [depicting] the struggle of one woman to free herself from the chains of tradition and superstition which bind her.”41 In a similar vein, a blurb from the magazine West Africa on the back cover of the 1981 Heinemann edition praises the novel as “the most deeply felt presentation of the female condition in African fiction” by an author who was educated “unlike many other women of her generation at the Ecole Normale for girls in Rufisque.”42 Finally, the feminist publisher

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

141

Virago heightens the effect by adding an unambiguous misrepresentation of the novel’s content and message on the back cover: Ramatoulaye [the narrator] recalls her love for her husband and the shattering sense of betrayal she feels when he abruptly takes a second wife, a girl young enough to be their daughter. Whilst Islamic law sanctions his choice, to her it is a brutal denial of their years together and the intimacy of their marriage. Isolated, lonely and grief-stricken, she nevertheless passionately refuses to accept a polygamous life, knowing the price she must pay. (emphasis added)

As a matter of fact, Ramatoulaye fails to act in the face of this distressing situation: she remains in a polygynous43 marriage, thus enduring the situation created when her husband abandons his family to live with his second spouse. Undoubtedly, Western anglophone readers would embrace more readily a radical stance toward polygyny and identify more easily with an African woman divorcing a husband who takes a co-wife after twenty-five years of shared life, as suggested in the paratext. The protagonist’s principal rebellious streak is to reject two marriage proposals after her husband’s death, preferring to remain single, a choice contradictory to accepted local custom. On the other hand, Ramatoulaye’s friend and addressee of her letter, Aïssatou, chooses to divorce her polygynous husband when he takes a co-wife; she decides to rebuild her life through education and a career abroad. Faced with the same dilemma, the two women opt for a different course of action. In her essay “The Concept of Choice in Mariama Bâ’s Fiction” d’Almeida highlights Bâ’s insistence on the vital importance of women’s choices, showing that in So Long a Letter “women do have a deep consciousness of the options opened to them and that they are willing to make the choices that will make their lives more wholesome, no matter what the consequences may be” (171). Likewise, Kenneth Harrow in his introduction to the 2008 Heinemann edition characterizes Bâ’s work as forging the image of the “New African Woman,” concluding that Aïssatou’s financial success and career might have been thought to qualify her as the exemplar for the position of the New African Woman. But with Ramatoulaye Bâ reminds us of the importance of values grounded in Senegalese ways, which account for strengths of this most enduring figure and for the considerable influence that this novel has had upon subsequent generations of African women (Introduction vi).44

Evidently, such a nuanced position is not expressed on Virago’s book cover. Although this might not be the site where we should expect a finetuned analysis of a book’s contents, the editors of this anglophone edition

142

Chapter 4

aimed ostensibly at appealing to a Western audience by misconstruing the author’s message and recuperating it for a “feminist” constituency.45 In a similar vein, whereas the original N.E.A. paratext salutes Bâ as a member of “women’s organizations involved in social and cultural activities,”46 the 2001 Le Serpent à Plumes (Paris) edition introduces her as “fighting against castes and polygamy, claiming genuine rights for everyone as well as genuine rights for women.”47 Finally, whereas Heinemann describes Bâ as “a pioneer of women’s rights,” interestingly both the Nigerian New Horn Press edition and the British Virago edition portray her as “active in the feminist movement in Senegal” (emphasis added).48 The above are all instances of a deliberate construction of an African “feminist” novel designed to fit in with similar Western writing popular among certain anglophone reading constituencies.49 Feminisms In this context, the controversial epithet feminist calls for a cursory perusal of some relevant feminist postulations, since an “African feminist consciousness”—in itself a heterogeneous concept, as will be demonstrated—distinguishes itself from other feminisms, in the first place, of course, from Western feminisms. Although itself multifarious in nature, the term has in fact frequently been dismissed by African women, as it is associated with radical feminism, hatred of men as well as the rejection of motherhood (Arndt 38). This opposition has led to the dismissal of the term feminism and the suggestion of alternative terminology for the emancipatory struggle by African women. It is also noteworthy that, repeatedly criticized for its totalizing and hegemonic approach, Western feminism has actually moved away in the past decades “from universalising statements toward the local and particular” (Jackson and Jones 8). First and foremost, African feminism in its various guises must be viewed from its specific historical context, that is, African women’s common struggle alongside African men against imperial colonization. What unified African women in their initial opposition against discrimination was their subjugation to a double tyranny—colonization and a patriarchal system—as well as the distortion of precolonial traditions by their colonizers. African feminism thus faced and continues to face challenges that are clearly distinct from those on Western feminists’ agenda.50 As an example functions the following observation by Carole Boyce Davies: It [African feminism] respects African women’s status as mother but questions obligatory motherhood and the traditional favoring of sons. It sees utility in the positive aspects of the extended family and polygamy with respect to child care and the sharing of household responsibility, traditions which are compatible

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

143

with modern working women’s lives and the problems of child care but which were distorted with colonialism and continue to be distorted in the urban environment. (9)

Nonetheless, the concept of African feminism would be oversimplified by assuming that in 1981, when Bâ’s first novel was translated into English, African women would necessarily outright condemn polygyny, as illustrated in Boyce Davies’ statement above as well as by statements uttered by Ken Bugul that will be discussed in a later section. In her introduction to Ngambika, Boyce Davies mentions the example of the British-Nigerian author Buchi Emecheta who was denounced for suggesting possible benefits of polygynous marriages.51 Albeit sharing a specific world view and way of life, African feminists’ writing reflects the variations in religious, cultural, economic and political circumstances on the vast African continent. Of the different strands of feminism, Boyce Davies considers womanism—defined by Alice Walker as in part a Black woman’s feminism originating from African American and Caribbean cultures—as the most closely entwined with African feminism. Taking a much broader approach, Walker’s womanism factors in race and class: “Womanists are not only concerned with the overcoming of sexist discrimination, but also with discrimination based on people’s racial or socioeconomic identity” (Arndt 42). Furthermore, quite distinct from Walker’s womanism, Clenora Hudson-Weems coined the term “Africana womanism” in 1987, asserting in her book Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves, “the initial appeal of feminism was and continues to be largely for educated and middle-class white women and not for black or working-class women” (5). In her ideology pertaining to all women of African descent, HudsonWeems describes a family-centered, male-compatible, spiritual and adaptable womanism that fosters sisterhood. Africana women have traditionally placed issues of gender on an equal plane with matters of race and class. With respect to So Long a Letter, Hudson-Weems highlights the role of the woman as the defender of African cultural values, “the protagonist emerges as an Africana womanist, committed to her family above all, and dedicated to the proposition of upholding the true legacy of the Africana woman as a strong, proud culture bearer” (96).52 Lastly, in this brief discussion of different shades of feminism relevant for the interpretation of Bâ’s novel as well as other African feminine writing discussed in this chapter, Souad Ali’s description of “Islamic feminism” within the debate of women’s rights in Islam is particularly pertinent.53 Describing Islamic feminism as committed to pursuing feminism within Islamic terms, Ali analyzes So Long a Letter within the context of this school. Reminding

144

Chapter 4

the reader that polygamy is an ancient practice and not a typically Islamic phenomenon, she notes that the Qur’an prescribes certain conditions for polygamy that are often neglected. In regard to the Senegalese author, Ali argues: “Well versed in Qur’anic scriptures, Bâ used her knowledge of women’s rights decreed in the Qur’an to write a fine cultural critique of the exploitation of women through what she believes is a distorted interpretation of a sacred text that actually intends equality for both sexes. It is this stance that places Mariama Bâ within the Islamic feminist movement” (182). Although I believe that Ali’s Islamic feminism and Hudson-Weems’ Africana Womanism capture most accurately Bâ’s message in So Long a Letter it is not my contention here to favor one interpretation above others but to illustrate the diversity in feminisms that seem to recuperate the novel’s perceived meaning for their specific reading constituencies. Representing not only the feminist theory of white middle-class women of the Western world, the different terms—feminism, womanism, Africana womanism, and Islamic feminism—reflect the variety in race, class, and religion governing each specific discourse. Qualifying a woman’s struggle in an English-language paratext of an African narrative as “feminist,” therefore, suggests an interpretation whose links with its contents are at best tenuous if not outright reductionist and misleading, since Western readers will inevitably interpret such a label through their own prism. “[To] be a feminist implies a particular politicized understanding of being a woman,” recognize Jackson and Jones (2). This stance is aptly expressed by Emecheta Buchi who stated that by chronicling the everyday incidents in the life of an African woman, she didn’t expect to be called a feminist, “but if I am now a feminist then I am an African feminist with a small f” (175). Paratextual framing of Bâ’s novel in this manner, I would agree with Tobias Warner, “reveals the terms through which postcolonial literatures become legible to a world-literary public” (1239). It paves the way to literature’s “world-readability,” to use Brouillette’s designation (79). Retracing So Long a Letter’s path as it was integrated into world literature, Warner illustrates how the translation and the distortion of the novel as a denunciation of polygamy in Senegal propelled it on the world literary stage. This distortion, I would argue, begins on the book cover, aiming at an unobstructed reception by and circulation within the Western book market. “World-readability” is not an inherent characteristic of a certain type of fiction, but, to speak with Brouillette, “the result of a series of actual or imagined reading practices that can also be challenged and opposed, in some cases by the very texts that achieve global acclaim. In other words, texts are ‘world-readable’ when some ‘world-readability’ is read into them” (80). The editors and publishers are the first to perform and inscribe these reading practices. Finally, within anglophone publishing, these “super readers” will search corroboration for

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

145

their interpretation among critics, adding their print excerpts of reviews, the so-called “blurbs,” on the book cover.54 Ken Bugul: The Abandoned Baobab In contrast with the N.E.A.’s introduction of the first works by Bâ, Sow Fall and Diallo, Ken Bugul’s The Abandoned Baobab was not presented in its original French-language paratext as authored by an “ordinary” African woman. On the cover, her story is characterized as follows: “Never has alienation been lived with such intensity by a torn and sensitive woman, never has it been narrated with such despair.”55 Relating intimate details about her sexuality, drug use and prostitution in this first volume of her autobiographical trilogy, Ken Bugul herself admitted that the Senegalese readers “were very shocked” by this candid female writing describing a life that contrasted so starkly with that of the traditional Senegalese woman. Nevertheless, by 2003 Ken Bugul commented in an interview that her text was now being read in high schools (Garane, Afterword 165). The twenty-year period elapsed since the initial publication of the book in Senegal spawned a changed chronotope addressing a culturally specific readership, or, to speak with Jauss: horizons of expectations have adjusted over time.56 Translated into English by Marjolijn de Jager and published by Lawrence Hill Books (Brooklyn) in 1991, The Abandoned Baobab: The Autobiography of a Senegalese Woman was received with enthusiasm, both in Europe and in North America. On the back cover of this first English edition a quote from Nikki Giovanni’s foreword underscores its universal appeal for a female readership: “Ken Bugul . . . seeks to understand her past in The Abandoned Baobab and by understanding her personal journey hopes to help the rest of us . . . Ken Bugul is talking to all women. We must hear her story. And answer back: You’re home.” Yet when we read the African American poet’s foreword entirely, we understand that Giovanni is expressly referring to Black women as the work’s targeted constituency.57 Giovanni emphasizes the relevance of Ken Bugul’s work and personal plight—contrary to the French edition, the English front cover explicitly denotes the autobiographical nature of the book in the added subtitle—for female readers that identify with African American descendants of slaves. Quotes from African American artists such as Phillis Wheatley, Nina Simone and Janet Jackson highlight the analogies between the fate of the African writer and her Black sisters in the diaspora. Mediated by the paratext, this translation is geared toward a distinct cultural constituency, in particular via the foreword (that is absent in the francophone edition). In the case of Giovanni’s foreword, for instance, one could question the correlation she establishes between the experience of the colonized Black woman and the African American female as a descendant of slaves.

146

Chapter 4

The prefacer provides an interpretation of the text that will orient the readers’ perception and restrict its signifying potential prior to the reading. Besides mentioning on the book cover some objective criteria that justify this translation58 the English paratext is also the first—among the francophone and anglophone editions—to use the term feminist in a blurb from the feminist magazine MS: “Bugul has written a powerful account of growing up female, black, and colonized. This book is feminist, furious, and unforgettable” (emphasis added). It is such perceived feminism in a work, praised by Western critics as the standard-bearer for African feminist literature that, according to critics, appeals to an international readership (Diaz Narbona 120). If Hitchcott describes the book as a “feminist confession in which the intimate experiences of the writing self address an international community of women” (67), Cécilia W. Francis confirms that it does so “against the grain, since the author deliberately highlights various stages leading up to the heroine’s downfall into that of a non-subject” (30).59 An extensive and rich contextualization of Ken Bugul’s first novel is provided by Garane’s afterword in the latest English edition of The Abandoned Baobab. Besides furnishing detailed biographical information on the author, the reception of her work in Senegal as well as Ken Bugul’s later work, Garane seeks to answer such relevant questions as: “What explains this sustained international interest in this book? Why does it perennially appear on reading lists in college courses devoted to African studies, gender studies, and postcolonial studies? What is its appeal to nonacademic readership?” (166).60 In addition to its perceived feminism and singularity, Garane points to the concurrence of Ken Bugul’s first work’s moment of publication with the development of women’s studies as an academic field in North America and Europe,61 its coincidence with a heightened interest in women’s autobiography as well as the call by (feminist) critics for a better understanding of the specific position of women of color. Ken Bugul: Riwan ou Le chemin de sable [Riwan or the Sand Path] After publication of what is still widely considered Ken Bugul’s seminal work, the Senegalese author completed her semi-autobiographical trilogy with two more volumes: Cendres et braises [Ashes and Embers] (L’Harmattan, 1994) and Riwan ou Le chemin de sable (Présence Africaine, 1999). However, neither of these two sequels was ever translated into English despite the (relative) popularity of Ken Bugul’s first publication and the paucity of new African female voices heard outside the African continent.62 In what follows, I will examine the possible explanations for the lack of interest by anglophone publishers, especially regarding Riwan, keeping in

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

147

mind, of course, this question can be posed apropos any meritorious literary work that has not been translated. Obvious answers include paucity of recognition and consecration in the domestic (source) book market by critics and/or the literary authorities, such as juries of literary prizes; perceived lack of literary qualities by the foreign (target) culture; and inadaptability to the poetics and ideology of the target culture, and consequently its quiet evanescence in a perpetually growing book market. Nevertheless, Riwan’s visibility was in fact raised, not only by way of its consecration via the 1999 Grand prix de l’Afrique noire but also through its selection among Africa’s best 100 books of the twentieth century (Azodo, Emerging Perspectives 4). Moreover, in 2007, the accomplished and prolific translator of sub-Saharan francophone literature, Marjolijn de Jager, translated about half of this work as a translator-in-residence in Lyon (France). Yet she had to abandon the project when she was unable find an editor.63 While it is unlikely that the quality of the translation was the cause for the editors’ dismissal—after all, de Jager’s translation of Le Baobab fou was welcomed by Publishers Weekly as “superbly translated” on the back cover of the 2008 edition—the translator herself was at a loss for an explanation regarding the anglophone publishers’ rejection of the translated text, the final part of Ken Bugul’s autobiographical trilogy. Let us, therefore, look more closely at Ken Bugul’s third text whose principal theme revolves around the question of polygyny. Shattered after her alienating experience both in Belgium and in France—in large measure the subject of the first two volumes of Ken Bugul’s trilogy—in Riwan, the French-educated, enlightened narrator has returned to her native African village where she finds healing and restoration in the presence of a marabout, or Serigne, as his twenty-eighth wife. The fact is that Ken Bugul’s third book— as well as her second Cendres et braises, though even less discussed by critics than Riwan—dismayed most Western (feminist) critics, who accused the Senegalese author of having written an apology for polygyny (Garane, Afterword 169). The narrator-protagonist in Riwan, perceived by some critics as a “traitor,” has been referred to as a “would-be feminist” (Couti 171), and the text’s content dubbed “rather forthrightly ‘non-feminist’” (K. Edwards 205). Contrary to Mariama Bâ’s novel So Long a Letter, in Riwan polygyny—in the West habitually considered an oppressive marital model serving patriarchal culture—is attributed positive qualities, while the monogamous model is criticized as a Western import that fails to adapt well to African reality (Gallimore 193–94). On the one hand reinforcing the dichotomy between Africa and the West, tradition and modernity, polygyny and monogamy, yet, on the other hand, opening a space for a third term, that is “African feminism,” Rangira Béa Gallimore asserts, “from the opening pages of the novel [Riwan], the reader

148

Chapter 4

senses the authorial need to raise a counter discourse whose purpose is clearly to indict the devastations of Western feminism in Africa.” Indicating that Ken Bugul’s arguments are problematic, Gallimore states that the author’s “subversive strategy becomes, in fact, the other side of the coin of Western speech that the author intended to denounce” (184). The critic rightly points out that as a co-wife of the Serigne—a holy man and respected leader in the Islamic community—the narrator occupies a privileged position since she has chosen to remain in his company of her own free will, for her personal healing and restoration. As a woman in her thirties who has known suffering and abuse in previous “modern” relationships abroad, the narrator’s situation is beyond comparison with that of another (fictional) character in the same text, the young girl Rama, who is forced by her family to join the Serigne’s harem.64 What becomes apparent from Riwan’s scholarly reception history is the gradual evolvement of the interpretation of Ken Bugul’s third work since its initial publication. From a categorical rejection by Western (feminist) critics’ binary approach—monogamy versus polygyny and modernity versus tradition—we observe a shift to full acceptance of the third term with respect to Riwan, as adopted by Alix Mazuet who states: “At the heart of the matter, it seems clear to me that one of the fundamental characteristics of Riwan’s narrative is that it reflects realities and imaginaries in which traditional and modern practices and values clash and mix in recurrent, simultaneous or successive ways” (18). As pointed out by Mazuet, Ken Bugul herself has explained that the three characters together—the narrator, the young woman Rama and the mentally challenged young man Riwan—constitute the three parts of an “ambiguous, multiple being” (30) that represent the author. To quote Mazuet at greater length: By shattering preconceived Western ideas about African polygyny and defying the Western unrelentingly negative understanding of this marital model, the author goes beyond the dislocation of colonial, postcolonial and neo-colonial violence towards Africa; she destabilizes power dynamics between Africa and the West by way of a mirror effect of which the purpose is double: to present the West with contradictions inherent to its own marital model, and to show Africans that one possible outcome of blindly imitating Western modernity is a split self incapable of holding onto anything, any authentic traditional heritage, any becoming. (38–39)

Convincingly rupturing the dominant dichotomies—between the idealized Western matrimony versus the “oppressive” polygynous African relationship—and in pursuance of a triadic solution Mazuet concludes: “the idea that a woman born in a traditional African milieu but educated in the West could marry into polygyny and find self-empowerment becomes a third term” (40).

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

149

Ken Bugul’s own defiant stance to the unrelentingly negative Western understanding of polygyny/polygamy corroborates Mazuet’s assertion. Challenged in an interview for speaking in favor of polygamy in Riwan, Ken Bugul declares: “Polygamy or monogamy, it’s the same to me. I needed healing and it is in that environment that I found it” (Garane, “La Femme moderne” 105).65 It must be noted that the Senegalese author defends Islam and polygamous relationships, chiefly in the sense that women are better protected in an Islamic society whenever God’s stipulations regarding this marital model are obeyed. Similar to Ramatoulaye in So Long a Letter, Ken Bugul insists on the observance of the Islamic rules regarding polygamy as originally prescribed by God—such as, for instance, the fair and equal treatment of all co-wives by their husband—while admitting these rules are abided by more strictly in a rural setting than in the city. In a similar vein, when asked whether she considers herself a feminist, Ken Bugul replied, rather ambiguously: “I consider myself a woman. A human being. A human being who is also a woman. As a woman, one inherently is a feminist, so why still claim to be one?” (Garane, “La Femme moderne” 102).66 Presumably Ken Bugul is referring, if not to a form of African feminism, then at least to a viewpoint that corresponds to neither a typical Western feminist position nor a conventional African perspective, that is, a third term.67 Whatever the interpretation we attribute to the author’s stance on the position of African women, it is clear that Riwan continues to interest scholars whose analysis of the novel is subject to shifting perspectives. Most recently, in 2017, Falilou Ndiaye and Moussa Sagna have recuperated Riwan among Ken Bugul’s “feminist autobiographies,” though clarifying that her feminism constitutes in no way an imitation of her Western sisters. Noteworthy is also Riwan’s translation into five European languages: Spanish (2005), Italian (2006), Albanian (2007), Slovenian (2010) and German (2016), but not into English. While Riwan’s counter-discourse has been embraced by representatives of the continental European publishing industry, it has not—at the time of writing—piqued the interest of its anglophone counterparts. This elicits questions such as: is a more significant change in chronotope a sine qua non for Riwan’s publication in English? Or will the chasm between Ken Bugul’s “third term feminist” ideology of the source text and the anglophone target culture remain too large to be bridged? Aminata Sow Fall: The Beggars’ Strike and Other Texts Qualified in 2000 by Hitchcott as, “the best known woman writer still living in francophone black Africa” (Women Writers 89), Aminata Sow Fall has published seven novels to date of which only her second, La Grève des Bàttu, has been translated into English as The Beggars’ Strike (two years

150

Chapter 4

after its original publication in 1979). The English paratext highlights the novel’s consecration, both by the Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique noire as well as its appearance on the Goncourt prize shortlist.68 However, the gender of the author—in 1981, with Mariama Bâ, Sow Fall was among the first francophone sub-Saharan female novelists to be translated into English—is nowhere emphasized on the cover of the anglophone edition. In all likelihood, its subject matter, a “brilliant satire on conflicting values in the pushy world of the developing world African city” (back cover), fails to distinguish itself from that of most francophone African novels written by men. The novel has generally been praised for its astute social criticism, not for its representation of the feminine condition in West Africa.69 Indeed, the well-known Senegalese literary patron and poet Annette Mbaye d’Erneville argues in a conversation with Sow Fall that in her first two novels, instead of manifesting herself as a feminist, she writes “as a writer, an observer.”70 Sow Fall chronicles degradation and flaws in society in general, with respect to the family as the societal cornerstone in particular, yet she refrains from outright condemning polygyny. In interviews, Sow Fall herself repeatedly rejected the label “feminist,” espousing the view that the Western feminist movement fails to articulate the preoccupations of women in Africa.71 In her book Women Writers in Francophone Africa, Hitchcott dedicates a chapter to the work of Aminata Sow Fall entitled “Aminata Sow Fall: A ‘Masculine’ Voice?” Commenting on the absence of feminine perspective, especially in Sow Fall’s early novels, Hitchcott characterizes her work as being “predominantly concerned with the way in which traditional African values, such as solidarity, are being rapidly replaced by consumerism” (90).72 Hitchcott notes, however, that in her sixth novel, Le Jujubier du patriarche, a female figure finally “begins to challenge the figure of the silent woman and at the same time build a bridge between modernity and tradition” (“African ‘herstory’” 105). It is striking that even the scholar, translator and advocate for francophone feminine writing, Dorothy Blair, was unable to persuade her editor at Longman to publish more translated work by Sow Fall.73 In her article “La Question du féminisme chez Mariama Bâ et Aminata Sow Fall,” Médoune Guèye points out that Western critics have frequently demonstrated a Manichaean approach to Bâ and Sow Fall’s literary works, by referring to the first as a “feminist” and to the second as an “anti-feminist” (308). In the case of Bâ, critics focus on the damaging effects of polygyny she describes while shedding insufficient light on themes such as social hypocrisy and the treachery of certain women, topics also tackled by Bâ. According to Guèye’s more nuanced approach, Bâ’s feminism resides particularly in the way the Senegalese writer describes women’s lives in order to promote the well-being of all humans. With respect to Sow Fall, Guèye contends that critics tend to emphasize her indifference to the feminist cause, a perception that

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

151

Guèye does not share believing that many characters in Fall’s novels represent a progressive form of feminism. She concludes: “If there is a difference between M. Bâ and A. Sow Fall, it resides neither in the perception, nor the representation of the position of women, but rather in the thickness of the brush they use: while Bâ emphasizes the family setting, Sow Fall emphasizes society in general” (317).74 I would argue that it is exactly this perception, if not of “anti-feminism,” then at least of lack of a specific representation of the feminine condition, that has failed to draw anglophone editors to Sow Fall’s novels (with the exception of The Beggars’ Strike).75 An additional “masculine” voice, neither striking enough to stand out among the aggregate—that is, consecrated by the literary establishment—nor recognized by agents in foreign book markets— be it publishers, translators or literary agents—has fewer chances of being endowed with an afterlife on the international book market. As we have seen, among the staggering number of literary texts published worldwide, a foreign narrative will have the most chances of being included in the 3 percent of translated literature published on the anglophone book market, firstly whenever it has been recognized by the literary establishment in its domestic book market and/or secondly (in most cases) the dominant ideology of the target culture is mirrored in the translation.76 Nonetheless, other factors may play a crucial role in the transfer of the literary narrative from one linguistic and cultural domain to another one: the translator as literary mediator, advocate or even activist. In the next section we will examine the specific contribution of some translators to the development of, in particular, the (early) feminine African canon available on the anglophone book market. THE LITERARY TRANSLATOR AS ADVOCATE AND ACTIVIST Until the early 2000s, the function of the translator as a cultural and social agent actively involved in the (re)production of texts has remained generally underexposed in translation studies. As a result of the cultural (1990s), the sociological (2000s), and most recently the “activist” turn (Wolf, “The Sociology of translation”), the focus of translation theorists has progressively addressed the extratextual dimension of the texts’ afterlives and the translation agents. For the discussion on agency, we return to one of the foundational concepts of Bourdieu’s theory of social research, habitus, that has proven a fertile point of departure for the debate in translation studies apropos[apropos] the translator as agent (Simeoni, “The Pivotal Status”; Simon, Presentation; Wolf, “The Sociology of Translation”). Bourdieu uses the term habitus—based on the Aristotelian notion of hexis—as a conceptual

152

Chapter 4

tool to bridge the dichotomy between the structuralist social framework and the subjective view of the individual. The habitus as “socialized subjectivity” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 126) leads to a set of dispositions that impel agents to act and react in certain ways within a given field or system of objective relations. John Thompson provides a clear synthetic explanation of this acquired frame of mind: The dispositions generate practices, perceptions and attitudes which are “regular” without being consciously coordinated or governed by any “rule.” [. . .] Dispositions are acquired through a gradual process of inculcation in which early childhood experiences are particularly important. Through a myriad of mundane processes of training and learning, such as those involved in the inculcation of table manners [. . .] the individual acquires a set of dispositions which literally mould the body and become second nature. The dispositions produced thereby are also structured in the sense that they unavoidably reflect the social conditions within which they were acquired. (12)77

These social dispositions govern the agent’s practices, including the translator’s production. Introducing the notion of specialized “translatorial habitus” (21), Simeoni argues that the latter has contributed over the centuries to the internalization of submissive behavior by translators, historically conditioned to accept certain norms. However, Simeoni focuses mainly on the significance of these norms with respect to the textual level, pointing out that they provide the framework for stylistic decisions in the production of translations. Moving beyond the linguistic confines of the text, Michaela Wolf adopts the notion of habitus to foreground the activist role of the translator and translation as a political activity. Following the cultural and sociological turn, she proposes to introduce the denomination “activist turn” in translation studies. The focus is thus gradually redirected from the micro-level of the text to the macro-level of the socio-cultural context, via the intermediate position of the publisher and other agents. Wolf poses questions such as: What political factors mold the habitus in a translatorial context? And what are, in fact, the translator’s sociopolitical responsibilities? (“The Sociology of translation” 136). Disputing the notion of the supposed “neutral” or “invisible” translators, she expounds on the implications for their political habitus as a result of growing needs for translation in global information flows and in situations of war, conflict and terrorism, to name but a few concrete examples within new research fields. A description of committed translators and their production that is more readily applicable to literary translation is provided by Sherry Simon: “Translations are a form of engagement when the necessary partiality of translation becomes partisan, when translators adopt advocacy roles in situations of socio-cultural inequities” (11).

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

153

I argue that translators can exercise their advocacy roles most effectively by way of their extratextual agency, that is, the role they play in “the selection of books to be translated, the use of different editions and intermediary translations” as well as in “‘speaking out,’ publicizing their translations, explaining their methods and strategies” (Paloposki 191).78 It is also this extratextual dimension that Buzelin foregrounds in her 2005 article in which she contrasts Bourdieu’s theory of the literary field and Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT). Yet, rather than focusing on strategic positioning of agents in the field or system, Latour examines the network of relationships between the different actors. Buzelin suggests that Latour’s methodology, when applied to the domain of translation studies, would enable us to answer questions such as: “how and by whom (through which channels) is the text to be translated selected? What are the arguments put forward (and by whom) in this selection process? Who participates in the negotiations over translation rights? How are these participants recruited? How do they interact and negotiate room for manoeuvre?” (“Unexpected Allies” 209). The efficiency of different types of networks is illustrated by Szu-Wen Cindy Kung’s study regarding the translation of contemporary Taiwanese novels in the United States in which she applies both Latour’s ANT and Bourdieu’s theory of the social field. Kung distinguishes two types of networks: the translator-led network and the subvention-network. While the latter is initiated by a source-culture agent connecting to target-culture agents, the former is based on the “personal interest and enthusiasm for the original work” (128) of a translator, active in the target culture, who selects literary works from the source culture and is eventually successful in recommending them to specific publishers. Kung’s study exemplifies the success of the translator-led network with regard to the promotion and export of a minority or lesser-known literature, that is Chinese (Taiwanese) in the book market of a major literature (American) and a global language (English). In recent years, research into the role of translators as promotors of minority literature and languages has gained currency within translation studies.79 In what follows will be illustrated to what extent the role of some translators as agents and networkers has been paramount in the promotion and export of sub-Saharan francophone narratives—a minority literature written in a central language— on the dominant anglophone book market. Scrutiny of our complete corpus narratives (and beyond) reveals the recurrence of a number of names of translators: Marjolijn de Jager leads with ten corpus translations (seven by women authors); Dorothy Blair (1913–1998), pioneer in the translation of francophone sub-Saharan literature, follows with five (four by women authors); Clive Wake (1929–2012) accounts for six translated corpus titles, two in collaboration with John Reed); Helen Stevenson has translated five of Mabanckou’s novels to date; Amy Baram

154

Chapter 4

Reid is the translator of four titles (two by Véronique Tadjo); finally, the translator and anthologist John Reed (1929–2012) is responsible for four English versions of corpus texts (two in collaboration with Clive Wake).80 Almost all these literary translators are (or were) active in the academy as professors and scholars: Dorothy Blair, Clive Wake, John Reed and Amy B. Reid either combine(d) their academic profession with literary translation and/or dedicate(d) their retirement to the translation of francophone literary works into English, while Marjolijn de Jager is also the author of several scholarly articles. One of the first translators of French-language African (not solely sub-Saharan) literature into English, Dorothy Blair, is remembered as “a pioneering researcher and critic as early as the 1950s, from her base in the institutionally hostile environment of South Africa, first at the University of Cape Town and then at the University of Witwatersrand,” writes Peter Hawkins in her obituary (5).81 Particularly after her retirement in the United Kingdom, Blair became a prolific translator of francophone African writing from West Africa, including work by Birago Diop (Tales of Amadou Koumba, 1966), Olympe Bhêly-Quenum (Snares Without End, 1981), Aminata Sow Fall (The Beggars’ Strike or the Dregs of Society, 1981), Alioum Fantouré (Tropical Circle, 1981), Nafissatou Diallo (A Dakar Childhood, 1982) and Mariama Bâ (Scarlet Song, 1985), as well as work by Maghreb writers, such as Assia Djebar and Leïla Sebbar, and authors from the Middle East, such as Amin Malouf.82 Blair was introduced to African writing in French when she was requested to provide translations of poems and extracts from francophone African and Malagasy writers for the anthology Darkness and Light (1958), edited by Peggy Rutherford. Thus, she found her road to Damascus. She discovered her mission that she herself described as follows: “French African reading had been revealed to me and I was determined to act as a missionary and reveal to non-French readers, by critical studies and translations, its wealth, originality and literary validity” (“Translating Francophone Writing” 121; emphasis added). Although the term “missionary” is a somewhat unfortunate choice within a (post)colonial context due to its imperialist connotations, Blair became, in fact, a highly interventionist mediator as a scholar but even more so as a translator, making French-language African literary works accessible to an anglophone readership, both in the West and on the African continent. Her extensive personal correspondence with authors and publishers—archived at the Westminster University in London83—attests to her active role in the selection of translations and her influence on editors that published them. Blair was indeed on a mission, expressing repeatedly her personal preference for the translation of African female writing. For instance, in a letter to Aminata Sow Fall on October 1, 1983, she declares: “In the foreseeable future, I hope to focus on Black African work in French written by women, which I am eager

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

155

to make known in all Anglophone countries” (DGB-15b; emphasis added).84 She articulates her authority as a translator among publishers in no uncertain terms, for example, in another letter to Aminata Sow Fall on March 13, 1980, in which she asserts with respect to the publisher Longman (where she published most of her earlier translations): “I am responsible for recommending and potential translation of works [by African writers] into French”85 (DBG15b). In a similar vein, she proudly announces to Léopold Sédar Senghor in a letter dated September 2, 1985: “I have been successful in arousing the interest of a growing number of British editors who have added an African work in an English edition to their publications” (DGB-15a).86 As Hawkins reminds us, the authors translated by Blair are predominantly female, almost 70 percent, sixteen out of twenty-three of the literary translations listed in the bibliography, “reflecting her feminist views and emphasizing a commitment throughout her career to giving an international voice to the writings of marginalized and repressed groups” (“Dorothy Blair” 5). Blair herself divulges that her feminism (a label that she embraces whole-heartedly) and her independent spirit were directly instilled into her by her mother.87 My contention is that Blair’s work as a translator with a “feminist agenda” should be interpreted as a “political act” that amplifies internationally unheard female voices. She may not have used the expression herself, opting for “missionary,” but it was clearly her objective to advocate for the dissemination of literary texts written by African women, both from West Africa and from the Maghreb. Although the designation “political act” can refer to the translator’s discursive practices, in this context the focus is on the extratextual dimension of the selection of texts on the intermediate level of one of the primary agents of literary (re)production, the translator. In the 1980s and 1990s, Blair’s advocacy interacts on a macro-level of the social context with an indisputable demand for feminine/feminist writing from “marginal” cultures by the target culture, that is, the Anglo-American book market. These female voices respond both to a desire of “mirroring” or “self-recognition” (Venuti, The Scandals 77) as well as a demand for “exotic” feminine writing, particularly in the United States. A second influential translator regarding our corpus narratives is the previously mentioned Marjolijn de Jager. She considers herself expressly an activist, viewing translation literally as “an act of political activism” (“Translation as Revelation” 85) in the sense described above by Wolf. A prolific translator of sub-Saharan French texts into English since the late 1980s, de Jager qualifies her “coming to translation” as: a conscious political act, gradually replacing [her] decades of joining marches, rallies and demonstrations against imperialism, oppression, unjust warfare, and for women’s rights, gay rights, civil rights and peace. For here was the perfect combination of practising literature and activism by giving a wider

156

Chapter 4

voice to authors—and, whenever possible, to women in particular—to whom only a much smaller francophone readership could otherwise be exposed. (“Translation—A Listening Art” 113; emphasis added)

Like Blair, de Jager came serendipitously to the translation of francophone sub-Saharan literature. In her article “Translation—A Listening Art,” she explains how her initial interest was sparked by a journey to West Africa. Later she discovered one of V. Y. Mudimbe’s novels at the library of the Alliance Française in New York, decided to translate it and stumbled upon an editor at Simon & Schuster with an interest in African literature willing to publish her translation.88 As a literary translator de Jager rapidly established her reputation among scholars and publishers alike. Although she does not always select the texts to be translated herself she states: Publishers who are familiar with my work tend to send me projects that suit my expertise and my preferences. The criteria for me are that they be francophone works, written by women whenever possible (it is a matter of presenting the least frequently represented voices to the anglophone readership), and have a content that in some way is probably unexpected and unfamiliar to the reader: a matter of opening horizons.” (emphasis added)89

De Jager echoes Blair’s stance, that is, her preference for translations of texts written by women, “the least frequently represented voices,” and the importance of the translator’s collaboration or networking with publishers (confirming Latour’s Network-Actor Theory and Kung’s study mentioned above). Although undoubtedly few translators of francophone narratives into English specifically prioritize female writing, they may share with Blair and de Jager a preference for translating unknown African texts deserved to be more broadly known, such as the scholar and translator Amy B. Reid, who translated literary works by Véronique Tadjo and Patrice Nganang.90 Reid regards her work as a translator “as political, in the sense that [she is] making available voices and texts that ought to be heard more widely.” She also specifies the constituency she has in mind for her translated texts: In part, I am motivated by my vocation as a teacher: I regularly teach French literature in translation, and I want to be able to share with my English-reading students important, moving, thought-provoking works of literature. It is frustrating to have to set a reading list based on “what is available.” So, I translate; this helps me, and my students, and hopefully other teachers and students.91

Similar to de Jager, who aims to present the “unexpected,” “unfamiliar” and wishes to “open horizons” to her readers, Reid aspires to make available

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

157

“thought-provoking works of literature” for her students. These aspirations may lead to tensions between the translators’ ideals and the ethnocentric tendencies in the publishing field where adaptation to the target culture ideology and domestic values will facilitate the insertion of the translated text. In other words, extensive discrepancies between the ideological beliefs and representations of the foreign (source) culture and the domestic (target) culture may prove irreconcilable. A minimal degree of recognition and identification is required for the text’s readability and a sine qua non for many publishers (see chapter 2). As illustrated above, Ken Bugul’s third text, Riwan ou Le chemin de sable, when proposed to anglophone publishers by Marjolijn de Jager, was not accepted for publication, chiefly, as I argue, for the reason that its perceived ideology contradicted mainstream Western (feminist) views on a macro-level of the sociocultural context. Once beyond the serendipitous “coming-to-translation” stage during which the translators establish a relationship of trust and credibility with their publishers as well as (living) authors, a fruitful collaboration will permit these “rewriters of texts” to advance their “political” agenda. Particularly full-time translators spend much time and energy on promoting themselves by seeking great books and pitching them to publishers. This enhances their agency and illustrates the complicitous interdependence (the network) of translators and publishers. In a 2017 interview, Roland Glasser—translator of Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83, one of our corpus narratives—clarifies that pitching books “is a key part of both self-promotion and finding work. But this effectively requires us to work as literary scouts, yet without the retainers or commissions that a literary scout would receive” (Rickard Blair).92 It must be noted, however, that such a privileged and influential position is frequently reserved for the translator active in proximity to the literary pole of the publishing field, whereas a “blockbuster” translator—who may work in a team and under great pressure—plays a far less interventionist role, albeit not quite reduced to what Bourdieu disparagingly describes as a “simple adapter of a foreign product” (“Une révolution conservatrice” 23–24).93 In this matter the binary opposition between the commercial and nonprofit hemispheres of publishing is once more visible, albeit not all-pervasive. For instance, Stefan Tobler, translator and publisher of the small independent press And Other Stories believes it makes sense for his publishing company to take translators’ suggestions, but “he doesn’t like translators to get too market conscious. ‘The bigger publishers think about profit and loss and we don’t really do that’” (Snaije, “The Translator as Agent”). On the other hand, Rebecca Carter, a former editor for Random House, acknowledges that when she worked at Harvill Secker, a UK publisher of international bestsellers by successful authors such as Murakami and Knausgaard, she “desperately relied on translators’ recommendations” (Snaije, “The Translator as Agent”).

158

Chapter 4

“Independence for the New African Woman came a full generation after independence of the African state,” observes Kenneth Harrow in his introduction to So Long a Letter (iv), specifying that a New Africa is not only understood as an independent Africa but also as one that leaves behind certain traditional ways. The male-dominated nation liberation on the African continent brought little immediate solace for women. Toni Morrison describes their predicament as follows: “Women were given secondary positions and there was some sort of romance about how the relationship between men and women worked in Africa. They talked of great harems. It was very funny but they took it quite seriously and the women agreed, in the interests of nation-building, for a while” (qtd. from Christopher Bigsby in Showalter 446). Ironically, it was the French education system—often vilified by anticolonialist male writers as the culprit for the loss of national traditions—that empowered the educated women (such as the protagonists in So Long a Letter, Ramatoulaye and Aïssatou) to feature among the “first pioneers of the advancement of the African woman” (Bâ 26).94 Despite the late burgeoning of francophone African female writing, a number of early narratives by leading women authors were swiftly and successfully integrated in the canon of African literature. As illustrated above, English translations of some of the early representatives of this feminine African writing were privileged and subsequently appropriated by the anglophone book market, at times attributing them a (Western) feminist interpretation in conflict with the representation in their local/source book market and even contrary to the authors’ intentions. Narratives that resisted the label of “feminist”—such as most works by Aminata Sow Fall and Ken Bugul—were not deemed worthy of an afterlife in the anglophone metropolises. Anglophone academia particularly welcomed the “new” feminine African writing, albeit chiefly in the guise of epitomes reinforcing prevalent ideological values of Western feminism. In some cases, the new paratext became a repository of misleading images that conformed to the dominant or desired representations of women in the Western target culture, at least in the corpus under consideration. In spite of the heightened visibility of certain preferred categories of sub-Saharan francophone narratives, it must be noted that this prerogative rarely led to globalized blockbuster-driven publishing. Unquestionably, a multitude of other explanations exists within the overall hierarchized and iniquitous cultural space for the selection of a tiny fraction— with respect to the immense anglophone publishing market—of all published literary texts that cross its linguistic borders. Endowed with agency, some translators—notably Dorothy Blair and Marjolijn de Jager—were instrumental in promoting francophone sub-Saharan narratives authored by women writers within the Anglo-American book market. Yet, although they may act as strong advocates of a specific category of translations, translators

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

159

ultimately depend on the publishers for the actual production of the text, as shown by the example of Riwan ou Le chemin de sable recommended by Marjolijn de Jager. Occasionally, heightened interest for a work resulting in translation can be explained by fortuitous circumstances, “a mysterious alchemy of forces at work beyond good writing and hard work . . . timing, the book falling into the hands of certain key people, a bookseller believing in a book, combined with other less tangible biblio-forces” (Schoolman). Finally, domestic recognition of works, in the form of eminent literary prizes or interest by critics and scholars, may also pique the interest of foreign publishers, as shown in chapter 3. A full-fledged scandal—as the one aroused by the consecration of Batouala by the Goncourt prize—will inevitably place a text in the international limelight and generate journalistic capital across national borders. However, the messages propagated by the foreign critics may differentiate widely from one literary field to the next, as will be illustrated in the following chapter. NOTES 1. In her corpus of 404 African writers, Ducournau identifies 5 percent of emerging women writers in the 1960s, a percentage that has risen to 39 percent between 2000 and 2009 (La Fabrique 267). 2. The first anglophone, internationally published female African writer was the Nigerian Flora Nwapo who emerged in 1966 with Efuru; she was soon followed by her countrywoman Buchi Emecheta in 1972 with her novel In the Ditch. 3. See also Miller, chapter 6 “Senegalese Women Writers, Silence, and Letters: Before the Canon’s Roar” (Theories of Africans 246–293). 4. “venue à l’écriture.” 5. “prise d’écriture.” 6. Moudileno observes that by 2000 these women writers were receiving more specific scholarly attention than African literary production in general (81). 7. D’Almeida refers to work by Mineke Schipper, Carole Boyce Davies and Christopher Miller (Francophone 5). As pointed out before, the monolithic epithet “African” in “African traditions” fails to do justice to the great variety in ethnicities and cultures that it lumps together, including when referring to precolonial traditions. For instance, contrary to the above, Azodo emphasizes the power and influence that women possessed in the precolonial Igbo society (African Feminism 41–47). 8. There seems to be a lack of consensus among scholars regarding what should be considered the first work of literature published by a francophone sub-Saharan female writer: for instance, Volet includes Ngonda by the Cameroonian adolescent Marie-Claire Matip (Douala-Yaoundé: Librairie du Message, 1958) (Volet 18), while Miller, who excludes autobiographical works, bestows this honor on Aminata Sow Fall’s Le Revenant (Dakar, Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1976) (Theories of Africans 250, note 11). Neither has been translated into English.

160

Chapter 4

9. Toman explains the rejection of Rencontres Essentielles by publishers at the time as follows: “a novel calling for the redefining of African feminism did not seem to reflect the real issues stemming from colonialism.” African critics dismissed it as “too Westernized” and even “egocentric.” After independence, Africans were preoccupied by more “urgent” matters (Introduction xxiii). It was the male writers who were considered involved in the more “fashionable” project of anti-colonial nationalism (see also Andrade 6). 10. It must be noted that Dakar attracted young African women to its educational facilities. For instance, the Ecole Normale in Rufisque (close to Dakar) was established in 1938 to train young women to become teachers, among them Mariama Bâ. The Senegalese literary patron and poet Annette Mbaye d’Erneville, herself an alumna of the Ecole Normale, encouraged both Mariama Bâ and Ken Bugul to write and assisted them with the publication of their first novel (Garane, Afterword 162; Hitchcott, Women Writers 17). 11. It must be stressed that these visibility lists are based on African authors and not on their literary works. 12. For a detailed description and analysis of these lists see La Fabrique, chapters 4 and 5. 13. Beyala emigrated from her native Cameroon to France; Ken Bugul—originally from Senegal—has resided in Belgium, France and Benin; Tadjo—born in France to an Ivorian father and a French mother—lived in Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, England and the United States; Liking was born and raised in Cameroon but subsequently moved to Ivory Coast; Sow Fall studied in France for eight years before returning to Senegal; finally, Diome emigrated from her native Senegal to France. 14. See “In Memoriam” in Scarlet Song, translated from Un Chant écarlate. 15. Henceforth referred to as N.E.A., Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines were created in 1972 by the Senegalese government in association with the governments of Ivory Coast (and since 1978 with Togo) in order to promote African publication of African works. Nevertheless, five French publishing houses held minority shares (Dorsinville 161; Miller, Theories of Africans 286). In 1988, this collaboration ended and Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines du Sénégal (N.E.A.S.) were established in Dakar (see website of Ministère de la culture et de la communication du Sénégal). http:​/​/www​​.cult​​ure​.g​​ouv​.s​​n/​?q=​​nouve​​lles-​​editi​​ons​-a​​frica​​ines​-​​du​-se​​negal​. Accessed November 18, 2019). 16. To put it differently: 26 percent of all texts authored by women (seven out of twenty-seven) were first published in West Africa versus only 7 percent (six out of ninety-one) of all male-authored texts. 17. Bâ’s first novel was translated in 1980 into German; by 1981 a translation in English, Dutch, Japanese, Italian, Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian had appeared. 18. Dorothy Blair mentions a demand for African female writing in a letter dated November 30, 1988, to Geoffrey Jones, responsible for the negotiation of foreign rights at Présence Africaine (DBG-15a, Dorothy Blair Archives). See also Andrade who contends that “feminist readers of African literature have tended to celebrate writing by women simply because they give voice to feminine subjectivity” (6).

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

161

19. Femme d’Afrique. La Vie d’Aoua Keita racontée par elle-même. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1975. 20. “[vu] l’intérêt croissant porté à la littérature féminine africaine, en Afrique anglophone [sic] comme en Amérique et au Royaume Uni.” Blair makes this comment in a letter to the publisher Présence Africaine, dated December 5, 1994 (DBG15a, Dorothy Blair Archives). 21. “un examen des institutions littéraires qui participent à la reproduction sociale et culturelle.” 22. Nonetheless, Miller points out cogently that the African canon taught in American universities is not necessarily identical to the one studied on the African continent, or even in French academia for that matter (Theories of Africans 288). In a similar vein, Cévaër proposed in the early 1980s the recognition of two editorial and cultural contexts with corresponding production circuits: on the one hand, the “black metropolitan” literature, defined as literature by African authors living in Paris; on the other hand, a “regional” literature, intended initially for local (African) consumption and an African readership (viii). 23. As a matter of fact, Genette distinguishes the peritext, the part of the paratext that surrounds the text, from the epitext, communication that is not physically attached to the text consisting of interviews with the author or promotional material. Therefore, epitext and peritext together make up the paratext. However, since the term “paratext” is generally used by scholars even when strictly speaking they are referring to part of it, the “peritext,” I will adhere to this practice in this study. 24. In the original French edition, Genette refers to “l’état nu,” literally “the naked state” of the book (Seuils 7). 25. Since the introduction and popularization of the electronic book, the “materiality” of the book has obviously evolved into electronic hardware combined with “immaterial” software. 26. Watts refers to Mikhail Bakhtin’s third essay “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel.” 27. “mère de famille, [qui] s’est découvert le goût d’écrire.” 28. The 2001 edition, published by the Paris-based Le Serpent à Plumes in the Motifs series, merely mentions Fall’s professional activities on the title page. 29. “se veut [. . .] ‘Sénégalaise moyenne’ et femme au foyer.” 30. This is a quotation from the foreword as translated in A Dakar Childhood by Dorothy Blair. D’Almeida emphasizes that not only the African female writers presented themselves so modestly but also female critics, such as Annette Mbaye d’Erneville who was instrumental in publishing work by Mariama Bâ and Ken Bugul (“Femme? Féministe?” 33). 31. See d’Almeida (Francophone 33–34) for possible explanations for these women’s preference for such a portrayal, despite their typically “extraordinary,” privileged backgrounds (Ducournau, La Fabrique 301). 32. Translated in 1986 by Dorothy Blair as Speak Out, Black Sisters. Feminism and Oppression in Black Africa. 33. “leur vécu quotidien dans leur société.”

162

Chapter 4

34. In an interview with Marie Umeh published in 1995, Flora Nwapa expresses an identical attitude: “I don’t think I’m a radical feminist. I don’t even accept that I’m a feminist. I accept that I’m an ordinary woman who is writing about what she knows” (27). Feminism, including African feminisms, will be the subject of a later section. 35. “ouverte seulement au récit du vécu des êtres et ne peut comporter d’imaginaire que celui qu’aura élaboré l’auteur comme substance de son bagage culturel.” Of course, the term “real-life” is ambiguous, since any story invariably implies a perspective and an interpretation, an idea that is also suggested by the following quotation. In the afterword of the 2008 English edition of The Abandoned Baobab, Jeanne Garane specifies: “Even if one accepts the idea that an autobiography is somehow not a piece of creative writing, it is worth pointing out that Ken Bugul calls her four works containing autobiographical material ‘autobiographical novels’ or ‘autobiographie romancée’” (172, note 1). For a discussion on the series “Vies d’Afrique,” see also Hitchcott, “African ‘herstory,’” 17–18. 36. The editor pitched The Abandoned Baobab as the narrative of a “woman who says it all because she wanted to say everything” (“cette jeune femme qui dit tout parce qu’elle a voulu tout dire”). This autobiography is also camouflaged in the sense that Roger Dorsinville requested Ken Bugul, whose real name is Mariètou M’Baye, to take a pseudonym “because of her candor [in the text], given the conservative nature of Senegalese society” (Garane 164). D’Almeida interprets this proposition as yet another “form of silencing” of African women (Francophone 45). I would argue that considering the transgressive nature of the text, Dorsinville’s decision to publish it at all constituted an act of courage. 37. “Ce n’est point une oeuvre d’imagination ni de pur exercice littéraire. Nafissatou se veut le témoin d’une société vivante, saisie de l’intérieur. Non, certes, à la manière des sociologues, ethnologues ou ethnographes, mais dans le ‘vécu’ quotidien.” Commenting on early francophone women writers’ attraction to the genre of the autobiography, d’Almeida notes that Diallo’s foreword “suggests that autobiography is the resort of a deficient imagination and prepares the reader to expect a mediocre talent that can only give birth to a second-rate writing. Seen in this light, autobiography becomes a diminution, and the ‘I’ is turned into a trivial, ordinary residual, as it were” (Francophone 33). Nonetheless, d’Almeida qualifies Diallo’s style not only as “simple,” but also as having lost some of its poetry and melody in translation (Francophone 170). In his chapter on Senegalese women writers, Christopher Miller goes as far as to exclude all autobiographies, noting that “these are rarely discussed” (Theories of Africans 250). Can this be explained by their occasional labeling as an “inferior genre”? If so, one wonders about the reasons for their inclusion among the few translated francophone African narratives. As will be discussed below, it is a translator’s enthusiasm that may secure a work’s afterlife. 38. However, in her book The Nation Writ Small Susan Andrade argues that scholars of African literature have generally failed to understand the allegorical relationship between some of these “domestic tales” written by women and national politics. She illustrates how African authors such as Mariama Bâ, Buchi Emecheta and Tsitsi Dangarembga “took up a political discourse on their own terms” (207).

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

163

39. “Chaque page, chaque paragraphe presque mettent l’accent sur un aspect important de la société sénégalaise dont les soubassements culturels se trouvent exhumés, expliquant conduites et attitudes.” 40. “son inspiration profondément ‘sociale’ [. . .] se confirme ici dans une remise en cause des systèmes qui marginalisent les pauvres au profit d’une minorité au sommet.” 41. In 1981, three English editions of Bâ’s novel were issued: first, by New Horn Press in Ibadan in Nigeria, followed by Virago (UK) and by Heinemann in the African Writers Series (UK). Heinemann was involved in the New Horn Press publication, since Currey explains: “We worked with Abiola Irele on the translation which was published in 1981 by New Horn Press in Nigeria as So Long a Letter (1981, AWS 248). We arranged for initial publication in Britain to be by the new feminist imprint Virago which could get its green covers into a wider range of bookshops than Heinemann could achieve in the orange covers of the African Writers Series. It could be called keeping foot in both ghettos” (70). The text was translated by Modupé Bodé-Thomas, a lecturer in French at the Polytechnic of Ibadan in Nigeria. 42. This sentence is repeated in the 2012 Waveland Press edition, with the addition nonetheless of single quotation marks around the phrase “unlike many other women of her generation.” 43. Whereas the terms “polygamous” relationship or “polygamy” (the state or practice of having two or more spouses at the same time) are used more frequently in this context, the terms “polygynous” relationship or “polygyny” (the state or practice of having two or more wives at the same time) convey the more specific and appropriate meaning in the given context. 44. Harrow’s introduction to the Heinemann edition was also included in the 2012 Waveland Press edition of So Long a Letter. It should be noted that a preface, with the potential of guiding the readers in their interpretation of the novel, was lacking in all previous French and English editions. 45. Admittedly, Dorothy Blair also hailed Bâ’s first novel as “the first truly feminist African novel” explaining that it “[weaves] skillfully (. . .) the accounts of the individual suffering and dilemmas into the exposition of her thesis: the issue of woman’s status in Senegal today. (. . .) It echoes women’s protests against exploitation everywhere in the world and is a call to feminine solidarity” (Senegalese Literature 139). 46. “associations féminines ayant des activités sociales et culturelles.” 47. “Luttant contre les castes et la polygamie, elle réclame des droits véritables pour tous et des droits véritables pour les femmes.” 48. In the case of the Nigerian publisher, this seems somewhat surprising at first sight. However, as noted above, Currey at Heinemann was involved in the publication and translation of Bâ’s first novel in Africa (Currey 70). 49. Clifford uses the term “construction” to describe the exhibition “Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern,” held in the MOMA in 1884–1885 which displayed specifically selected tribal art juxtaposed with modernist artifacts in order to emphasize the resemblance between the two (192). (See also the introduction).

164

Chapter 4

50. The controversial topic is summed up by d’Almeida as follows: “Some critics believe that African women were feminist before the fact [. . .] in traditional Africa women played full economic, social, and, occasionally, political roles in society. More generally, African women, although recognizing the need to address the issues of exclusion, exploitation, and the multiple colonizations faced by women, nevertheless have been suspicious of Western feminism (. . .) and at the extreme, have rejected it altogether” (Francophone 12). 51. Boyce Davies provides a detailed description of the contrasts between African and Western feminism in her introduction “Feminist Consciousness and African Literary Criticism” to Ngambika (1986). 52. See Susan Arndt’s article “Who is afraid of feminism?” for a detailed discussion of several other strands of African feminism, represented for instance by the Nigerians Chikwenye Okonke Ogunyemi—who arrived at the term womanism independently of Walker—and Molara Ogundipe-Leslie—who created an alternative concept to feminism that she named stiwanism. Likewise, Ada Uzoamaka Azodo discusses a whole array of recent indigenous feminist theories presenting a local (African, often Nigerian) vision of the empowerment and self-actualization of women in African Feminisms in the Global Arena. Novel Perspectives on Gender, Class, Ethnicity, and Race (2019). 53. Ali distinguishes three schools of feminism in the debate regarding women’s rights within Islam. Besides “Islamic feminism,” she defines “Secular feminism” as corresponding to Western-style secular feminism, and on the opposite end of the spectrum she identifies “Islamist Feminism” that distances itself entirely from Western feminism returning to the “true fundamentals” of Islam (180–82). 54. By the same token, interview questions can reveal preconceived Western ideas, as was demonstrated by one of the rare recorded interviews with the winner of the first Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, Mariama Bâ. Seeking confirmation of her theories, the interviewer, Barbara Harrell-Bond, a social anthropologist, asked Bâ in 1980: “Is it not true that women in precolonial African society had more power than they do today? Do you not think that modern African women are losing some of their power as they become ‘westernized’?” Bâ disputed this suggestion by replying that this power was “rather limited” and consisted chiefly of “moral power,” clarifying “we think of the wisdom of women, their lack of impulse which allows them to act after reflection” (209). 55. “Jamais l’aliénation n’a été vécue avec une telle intensité par une sensibilité déchirée, jamais elle n’a été contée avec un tel désespoir.” 56. In 2009, twenty-seven years after its initial publication, the text is finally issued in France by Présence Africaine. On its back cover, not only the scandal raised by Ken Bugul’s confession at the book’s publication is mentioned but also the troubling relationship between “the South” and the West, the latter in a state of disarray claiming its share of guilt and exoticism. 57. In a related vein, on the back cover the editors present Ken Bugul’s pain and confusion caused by both the legacy of colonialism and her self-hatred, as an experience familiar to Black women in general, stating that the Senegalese author chronicles “her struggle for identity as a Black woman in constant touch with the white world.”

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

165

58. Such as the selection of Ken Bugul’s text by QBR Black Book Review as one of Africa’s 100 best books and its translation into other languages. Although Le Baobab fou had indeed been translated into German (1985) and Dutch (1987) (eventually in 2001 into Spanish), the editors suggest an inflated number of translations by mentioning on the back cover its rendering into “numerous languages.” 59. Additionally, Francis points out that Ken Bugul’s prose “goes much further in examining uncharted problematic cultural zones branded as censured subject matter” (29) than her predecessors in African female life writing, such as Nafissatou Diallo, Aoua Keita and Simone Kaya. Neither Keita’s Femme d’Afrique, nor Simone Kaya’s Les Danseuses d’Impé-eya (Abidjan: Inades, 1976) appeared in an English translation. 60. De Larquier partially attributes the work’s success to some of its highly controversial content, at the time still taboo in Africa (123). 61. See also Christopher Miller’s comment above on the inclusion of women writers in the American university curricula (Theories of Africans 280). 62. In fact, at the time of writing The Abandonded Baobab remains the only work by Ken Bugul translated into English. After Riwan, followed La Folie et la mort (Paris/Dakar: Présence Africaine, 2000) ; De l’autre côté du regard (Paris: Le Serpent à Plumes, 2002) ; Rue Félix-Faure (Paris: Le Serpent à Plumes, 2004) ; La Pièce d’or (Paris: UBU Editions, 2006) ; Mes Hommes à moi (Paris: Présence Africaine, 2008) ; and Cacaphonie (Paris: Présence Africaine, 2014). 63. Personal email correspondence dated June 18, 2017. Further discussion on this translator will follow in the next section. 64. See also Jarmo Pikkujämsä’s discussion of Riwan in “Europe Discarded. Ken Bugul and the Twenty-Eighth Wife of a Marabout.” 65. “La polygamie ou la monogamie, cela m’est égal. J’avais besoin d’être habilitée et c’est dans ce milieu-là que j’ai pu l’être.” See also Bourget and d’Almeida’s interview with Ken Bugul in which the Senegalese author elaborates on her spiritual relationship with the Serigne whom she declined to consider as her husband. 66. “Je me considère femme. Un être humain. Un être humain qui est aussi femme. En tant que femme, on est féministe par essence, alors pourquoi le revendiquer encore ?” 67. In her interview with Garane, Ken Bugul confirms that in her African village she was looked upon as an outsider, a crazy woman. Even the Serigne called her laughingly “a crazy woman” (“une folle”) (“La Femme moderne” 103). 68. Contrary to the English translation, the 2001 Le Serpent à Plumes edition omits in its paratext any mention of the literary awards bestowed on the book. One is left to wonder whether this disregard on behalf of the French editor reflects the lack of symbolic capital this recognition represents. Another discrepancy that distinguishes the English edition from the French is the tendency to contextualize the translation more heavily. In general, Anglo-American publishers—and particularly university and educational presses—tend to exploit the paratext to a greater degree by providing background information on the source culture, thus easing the reader, as it were, into the foreign culture and/or and untranslated source language. In the case of The Beggars’ Strike, the translator Dorothy Blair added a short glossary explaining Wolof

166

Chapter 4

expressions and terms referring to aspects of Islamic society, such as “marabout,” “serigne,” and even “couscous.” 69. The same may be said about Aminata Sow Fall’s debut novel, Le Revenant, the first novel written by a woman in francophone sub-Saharan Africa, if we exclude autobiographies, notes Miller. He describes the text as follows: “a critical satire about social climbing in the Senegalese bourgeoisie; gender issues are very much at stake in this and in Fall’s other works, but not in the programmatic and self-consciously political way that one finds in Une si longue lettre” (Theories of Africans 250, note 11). 70. “en écrivain, en observateur” (25). 71. See for instance Hawkins, “An Interview” 425. In a similar vein, Miller contends: “Fall states that she is not a feminist ‘in the sense that people mean’ (leaving open the possibility that she is a feminist in some other sense); that she is not a ‘feminist militant’; that she has ‘not been influenced by the feminist current’” (Theories of Africans 273). Miller quotes from an interview with Sow Fall by Kembe Milolo in L’Image de la femme chez les romancières de l’Afrique noire francophone (1986). 72. Similarly, in Francophone African Women Writers, d’Almeida dedicates one section to Sow Fall’s novel L’Ex-père de la nation in her third chapter “W/Riting Change: Women as Social Critics.” In this novel about the rise and decline of a contemporary politician, d’Almeida observes, “none of the women is able finally to salvage the public morality that the male characters have so dismally failed, and that failure seems even to infect domestic lives” (153). 73. In one of her numerous letters to Sow Fall, dated January 12, 1988, Blair mentions that Longman accepted to publish the English translation of L’Ex-père de la nation (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1987). Unfortunately, the publisher failed to keep this promise (DGB-15b). The argument of expressing a “masculine voice” could also, at least partially, explain why Aoua Keita’s Femme d’Afrique was not translated into English. Keita’s autobiographical book takes a “masculine” approach by relating her public life. In fact, Hitchcott describes Keita’s text as a “public autobiography that deliberately censors the private space of Aoua’s ‘herstory’” (“African ‘herstory’” 24). The narrator focuses on socio-historical detail, that is, her life as a midwife and as an active member of the Union soudanaise du Rassemblement démocratique africain. Thus, the “masculine” writing that seems to blend in with the existing production by male African authors could explain, as in the case of most of Sow Fall’s novels, the lack of interest by translators and foreign publishers, in spite of the presentation by the publisher Présence Africaine of Keita’s text as, “a chronicle of a time, a militant woman’s testimony, this book is another wonderful tribute to African women by one of their most passionate and distinguished representatives.” (“Chronique d’une époque, témoignage d’une militante, ce livre est encore un hommage admirable aux femmes africaines par l’une des plus ferventes et des plus distinguées d’entre elles.”) 74. “S’il y a une différence entre M. Bâ et A. Sow Fall, elle n’est ni dans la perception, ni dans la représentation de la condition féminine, mais plutôt dans l’épaisseur du pinceau qu’elles utilisent : Bâ met l’accent sur le cadre familial alors que Sow Fall le met sur la société en général.” See also Miller (Theories of Africans 250, note 11) on Bâ and Sow Fall’s approach to feminism and the condition of women.

Early Female Writing and Its Reception

167

75. La Grève des Bàttu has been translated, not only into English but also into German (1982), Finnish (1990), Italian (1990), Swedish (1991) and eventually into Chinese (2011). Le Revenant, L’Appel des arènes as well as L’Ex-père de la nation have also been translated into German, while Le Revenant appeared in a Chinese edition (2010). 76. See particularly Lefevere (Translating Literature 118–19) and Venuti (The Scandals) for a detailed discussion regarding criteria such as ideology and poetics that play a role in the selection for translation. 77. For a detailed explanation of agents involved in translation, see Milton and Bandia as well as Buzelin’s “Agents of translation.” 78. Outi Paloposki introduced the distinction between textual, paratextual and extratextual agency, terminology that was first applied by Kaisa Koskinen to translation ethics. The textual refers to the translator’s voice and footprint within the text and the paratextual agency denotes the translators’ role in inserting and adding notes and prefaces. 79. Two other studies that demonstrate the influence of individual translators as promotors of minority languages/literatures are Stella Linn’s investigation of Francisco Carrasquer’s Dutch translations into Spanish that dominated in the second half of the twentieth century (2006) and Pekka Kujamäki’s research on the flow of Finnish translations into German during the 1920s and 1930s, largely controlled by Johannes and Rita Öhquist (2006). 80. Wake, one of Dorothy Blair’s students at the University of Cape Town, also translated poetry by Léopold Sédar Senghor and the Malagasy writer Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo and edited anthologies of African verse (with John Reed) and Malagasy poetry. 81. Blair’s scholarly writing includes African Literature in French. A History of Creative Writing from West and Equatorial Africa and Senegalese Literature: A Critical History. 82. For a complete list, see Hawkins’ obituary, “Dorothy Blair, 1913-1998,” 7–8. 83. See the Dorothy Blair Archives DBG-15a and DBG-15b. 84. “J’espère pour un avenir prévisible me concentrer sur les ouvrages négroafricains en français écrits par des femmes, que je tiens à faire connaître davantage dans tous les pays anglophones.” Blair expresses a similar predilection in a letter to Geoffrey Jones, in charge of translation rights at Présence Africaine, on November 30, 1988 (DBG-15a) as well as in her letter to Leïla Sebbar on August 14, 1990 (DBG-15a). 85. “je suis responsable pour la recommendation et la traduction éventuelle des ouvrages [d’écrivains africains] en français.” 86. “j’ai réussi à intéresser de plus en plus d’éditeurs britanniques à ajouter un ouvrage africain, en version anglaise à leurs publications.” See also Blair’s letter dated October 1, 1983, to Sow Fall (DBG-15b). 87. See Blair’s letter to Gisèle Halimi dated July 11, 1989 (DBG-15a). 88. It is striking that Blair mentions de Jager’s translation of Mudimbe’s novel Le bel immonde, (at the time forthcoming and the first of his novels to be translated) in a letter to Geoffrey Jones dated November 14, 1987. Blair herself had completed the

168

Chapter 4

translation of this work “of great literary quality, worth being known in the Englishspeaking world.” It had in fact been contracted by the Longman in 1982, but placed in “cold storage.” Not surprisingly, she was unhappy to hear that “a Dutch woman, living in New York,” that is, de Jager, had taken the initiative of translating the text and was negotiating its publication with a publisher (DGB-15a). It was de Jager’s translation that was published by Simon & Schuster in 1989 under the title Before the Birth of the Moon. 89. Personal email correspondence dated June 18, 2017. 90. As happened to Blair and de Jager, Reid also came serendipitously to translation. She was approached by Adele King to translate stories by Nganang and Tadjo for an anthology. She explains: “I’d say my work as a translator started with serendipity. Although Tadjo and Nganang have very different styles, I hit it off with each of them” (Personal email correspondence dated June 19, 2017). 91. Personal email correspondence dated June 19, 2017. 92. The translator’s influence is also acknowledged by Ros Schwartz who cochaired the awards committee of the PEN Translates award in 2017. In a press statement he announced that a number of the projects that won awards were “translator-led, underscoring the proactive role translators can play in bringing books to publishers’ attention” (Porter Anderson, “Industry Notes”). 93. “simple adaptateur d’un produit étranger.” 94. “premières pionnières de la promotion de la femme africaine.” These female characters also give ample credit for their education to their revered headmistress.

Chapter 5

Transnational Reception and Appropriation of René Maran’s Batouala

“Now go, my book, wherever chance may lead you”1 (Maran, 1921;18). René Maran quotes Verlaine’s Poèmes saturniens at the end of the preface to his novel Batouala. Little could the modest colonial civil servant Maran have suspected “how far his book would go.”2 The national furor and international reverberations provoked by the publication of his work earned him Senghor’s accolade “precursor of Negritude” (Senghor 13) and the honorable distinction of “founding father of black literature in French” (Godian 1230). The first writer of African descent to narrate the native’s experience under French colonialism was also “the first to give literary voice to an unexpurged black world-view which, until then, had existed almost exclusively in speech and song” (Allen 3). Maran’s short novel, set in the 1910s in colonial Ubangi Shari,3 now the Central African Republic, was awarded the prestigious prix Goncourt on December 14, 1921. This propelled it center stage of a mostly political, ideological and to a lesser degree literary scene. The gesture of literary legitimization by the ten Goncourt judges galvanized a swell of criticism directed primarily at what was perceived as the anti-colonialist and antiFrench propaganda of Batouala’s preface written by a “nègre.” In fact, it was not so much the novel itself that sparked furor but its framing paratext, the subtitle “véritable roman nègre”—literally translating as “true negro novel”— as well as Batouala’s incendiary preface. The latter had not been written by a French “patron,” a colonial administrator or influential French “homme de lettres” with close ties to the literary scene—as was the custom during the interwar years for French colonial narratives by Africans—but by Maran himself.4 Maran’s personal preface to his text Batouala was generally not emulated by francophone sub-Saharan authors who readily sought the patronage of French colonial administrators, such as for instance Gaston-Joseph for Koffi: The Romance of a Negro (1922) dubbed by some the “anti-Batouala.” 169

170

Chapter 5

As illustrated in chapter 4, these two elements of the book’s liminal space and its material packaging, predominantly shaped by the publisher, condition its reception. This chapter presents an overview of Batouala’s paratextual framing and journalistic reception in France as well as the novel’s presentation and reception in Germany and the United States—diachronically whenever relevant—in order to contrast these with a detailed analysis of the editorial and journalistic reception of Maran’s text in the Netherlands and its largest colony, the Dutch East Indies.5 When a (translated) literary text crosses cultural and linguistic borders, it commonly travels without its original paratext/context, and its meaning will be determined as much by the target as the source field (Bourdieu, “Les conditions sociales” 4). Selected among a plethora of titles, the translation—by definition a rewriting and a new interpretation—is presented in its new materiality shaped by the foreign agents involved in its production, that is—among the many agents involved—the literary agent, the translator, the editor and/or the publisher. “All works are subject to manipulation and even deformation in their foreign reception,” asserts Damrosch (24). He highlights that a perspective on (world) literature is invariably a perspective “from somewhere, and global patterns of the circulation of world literature take shape in their local manifestations” (24–27).6 As illustrated in chapter 4, in the process of local appropriation, certain elements of the literary text may be foregrounded, indeed even misrepresented. Although international communication in the form of literary texts can unwittingly lead to misunderstandings, more frequently translated texts are selected and interpreted in order to conform to their adopted literary field and its specific cultural readership. Bourdieu goes as far as to assert that foreign authors are regularly exploited to support causes they might condemn in their home country (“Les conditions sociales” 4–5).7 Two paratextual elements, the subtitle and the preface, will require a short introduction before we proceed to examine their function both in the original French text and in the translation zone of several international contexts. To the extent that the French, German and American versions have previously been the subject of research, these findings will be summarized and supplemented by relevant additional material in order to serve as a contrasting discourse to the textual framing and journalistic reception of Batouala’s Dutch translation. In chapter 4, the concept of chronotope (Watts/ Bakhtin) was introduced in reference to the changing of the paratext over time and space as a result of culturally specific readerships that are addressed. The stable text is eventually mediated by a changing paratext, adapted to its particular reading constituency. In a related vein, in Toward an Aesthetic of Reception the reception theorist Hans Robert Jauss includes the previous reading experience—both on the level of theme and genre—as an essential element that determines the readers’ “horizon of expectation,” that is, their

Transnational Reception

171

system of objectively definable intra- and extraliterary (societal) references. These evolve over time ushering in horizon changes. Thus, every text becomes part of a paradigm of previous texts and a new historical context; both can potentially modify the readers’ horizon of expectation. As will be illustrated in the case of Batouala’s paratext, its various French and foreign editions have oriented its reception over the course of almost a century across a number of Western nations. Similarly, shifts in political, socioeconomical and cultural circumstances have developed new horizons of expectation and chronotopes among its reader constituency, including its editors and critics. RECEPTION OF BATOUALA IN FRANCE Let us briefly recall the storyline of this “véritable roman nègre,” presented from the perspective of the eponymous protagonist, the chieftain Batouala, who lives surrounded by his nine wives in one of the villages over which he holds nominal sway. We follow him as he begins his daily routine in the company of his favorite wife, Yassigui’ndja. While Batouala muses on the strange customs and nefarious influences of the white man who has complicated his existence, he discovers that his young rival and handsome Don Juan, Bissibi’ngui, presents an imminent threat since he has now charmed Yassigui’ndja after having previously seduced his other eight wives. The rivalry between the two men and the unraveling of the story ends with the accidental death of the chief after he is mortally injured by a panther during a hunting expedition. Admirers of Maran’s novel praised his realist style—his skillful capturing of the African flora and the vivid description of African indigenous rites—that shunned prevailing exoticism in colonial literature based on fleeting observations by metropolitan travelers. The “véritable roman nègre,” as indicated by the subtitle, confronts the French reader with familiar as well as unfamiliar elements: the indication “roman” (novel) reveals a conventional aesthetic genre. In the case of the African novel, Mouralis observes, “novel” as part of a subtitle not only confers a literary status to the text but also acknowledges “the adherence to the principles of realism” (“Pour qui écrivent les romanciers africains?” 57).8 Yet, the ambiguous subtitle “true negro novel” raises semantic questions such as “what constitutes a negro novel?” and “what defines a true negro novel?” or even “what is a true negro?” Since the subtitle was to a significant extent responsible for the controversy caused by the novel’s publication it is relevant to ask the question: was this subtitle part of the title that Maran submitted to his editor at Albin Michel, or was it added by the publisher? After intensive research, Susan Allen concludes that Maran used the title “Batouala le Mokoundji” (Batouala the great chief) in correspondence before publication.9

172

Chapter 5

When Allen sought clarification regarding the subtitle in 2009, the Assistant au Service Fichiers at Albin Michel contended that in 1921 the editor “had added it to indicate that the author was truly ‘nègre’ and thus capitalise on the era’s vogue for Negrophilia” (Allen 23). Indeed, as evidenced by the journalistic reception of the novel, its subtitle was not only interpreted as the story about a “nègre” but also as written by one (a “true” one, for that matter). The editorial addition of the subtitle—intended no doubt to attract media attention and boost sales—attained its objectives gauging by the reactions it triggered in the media. At the same time, the three defining words of Batouala’s subtitle function paradoxically as an identity ensnarement and essentialism, a form of anti-racist racism.10 Elsa Geneste argues that the use of the word “nègre” leads to both exclusionary and inclusionary identity attributions that, as will be shown, were exploited by favorable and antagonistic critics alike. Batouala’s journalistic reception in France has been the subject of numerous articles and studies that will be summarily presented here before analyzing the novel’s appropriations by various foreign literary fields and political stakeholders (Fayolle; Porra, L’Afrique; Rubiales; Allen). Véronique Porra distinguishes three reception phases by the French press during the immediate aftermath of its publication, that is, between the summer of 1921 and the end of 1922. The first phase—the six months preceding the Goncourt award in December 1921—focuses on the contextual aspect of the author’s identity, or rather the identity he represents, an aspect that proved not totally irrelevant to the Goncourt committee either. After all, it was only three years previously that many “frères de couleur,” the so-called “tirailleurs sénégalais,” had sacrificed their lives alongside the French in the trenches of the “Grande Guerre.” While one of the prevalent arguments by the novel’s proponents highlights the recognition these men deserved for their loyalty to the French nation, most positive commentaries of the small number of reviews in the months preceding the selection of Batouala as the Goncourt winner revolve not so much around its literary merits as the skin color of its author, “‘a black man,’ ‘a brother of color,’ ‘an inferior brother’” (Porra, L’Afrique 74).11 A radical shift in the novel’s reception takes place in the wake of its consecration by the prestigious literary prize in December 1921 (Porra, L’Afrique 73). The “institutionalization” of the novel’s discourse now targets its message that is instrumentalized both by the political left and right. While the communist newspaper L’Humanité embraces Maran’s novel as a document on the exploitation of Blacks in Africa by those who were supposed to “civilize” them (Rubiales 135), the “louder” right-wing press and the (colonial) administrators vehemently reject it. René Maran’s virulent attack, notably in his preface, on colonial administrators in Africa as well as the resulting suffering of the indigenous people under the colonial regime, refute the “mission civilisatrice” and tarnish, his adversaries contend, France’s international

Transnational Reception

173

reputation. Furthermore, this criticism would play straight into the hands of France’s “enemy,” Germany, whose African colonies had been confiscated after World War I, allegedly due to the lack of “civilized” government of African territories.12 In addition, the portrayal in Batouala of Africans as “savages” would justify the Germans’ propaganda against “the Black Shame” (“die Schwarze Schande”), that is, the black colonial soldiers stationed in Rhineland after World War I whose occupation was considered humiliating, particularly by extreme right-wing Germans. In regard to the subtitle, the critics attacking the laureate associated the term “nègre” with literary incompetency, becoming synonymous with “primitive” in the pejorative sense of the word (Porra, L’Afrique 84). Whenever associated with identity, it is in an exclusionary fashion, opposing the “nègre” (Batouala-Maran) to a patriotic white Frenchman, as suggested by René Trautmann in Au Pays de Batouala (Geneste 18). Projected on the author’s hybrid identity, the perception of ambiguity similarly affects critics’ interpretation of the dualistic structure of the text—that is, the novel preceded by the preface—as will be shown below. The third phase of Batouala’s reception, as identified by Porra, was launched at the beginning of 1922, after publication of the novel’s German translation when the controversy was indeed recuperated by German critics.13 Two members of the French parliament then demanded administrative sanctions against Maran, not only as Batouala’s author but also as the presumed perpetrator, several years previously, of violent acts purportedly committed by the author in the colonies. Rubiales notes that in February 1922 the confrontation of the “affair Batouala,” fostered by the press articles, and the “affair Maran,” initiated by the colonial administration, intersected and utterly politicized the polemic discussion. In this third reception phase, the departure from the original interpretation of “nègre” in the subtitle becomes radical, suggesting connotations of “despicable” and “nasty”—the “bad book” was reduced to a “despicable book” (Porra, L’Afrique 87).14 In his role of “bad” colonial administrator, Maran’s authenticity as a black writer was questioned indirectly. Colonial and conservative circles strove to marginalize him to the utmost; Maran, embittered but not broken, returned definitively to France in 1923. The attempts by the French literary establishment and the colonial administration, to confiscate and reappropriate Batouala’s “true negro” voice and struggle on a fictional level are well known. The so-called “anti-Batouala” text, Koffi, roman vrai d’un noir, meaning “Koffi, true novel about a black man,15 published in France in 1922, ramped up the feud regarding the colonial novel’s claim to verisimilitude.16 Written by a white French colonial administrator, Gaston-Joseph, the story about an obsequious “native” was prefaced by a former governor general of the colonies, Gabriel Angoulvant, and awarded in 1923 the hastily created Grand Prix de littérature coloniale,

174

Chapter 5

the “anti-Goncourt” of sorts! Angoulvant emphasizes: “It is as the title indicates, the Novel of a Black Man, and I am tempted to say the (his)story, since it is a true, lived story, exact in its most minute details” (7).17 The governor general plays with the double meaning of the French term “histoire/Histoire,” story/history. Angoulvant’s claim to Koffi’s authenticity mirrors Maran’s, asserted both in Batouala’s subtitle and in his preface. The use of the word “vrai” (“true”) instead of “véritable” (“true,” but also “genuine” and “real”) to describe the novel and not the author seems an inevitable “compromise” that betrays the lesser degree of authenticity of Gaston-Joseph’s text given that the author himself is not African or of African descent. So, although Koffi’s story may be based on “true” events, the author’s as well as the prefacer’s perspective remain necessarily metropolitan French and colonialist.18 Brent Edwards believes this preoccupation with representation of truth to be a defining element of the colonial novel: “This pretension to verisimilitude imposes parameters that become definitive for the genre novel: an obsession for absolute ‘cultural truth’ that approaches a kind of ‘psychological naturalism,’ as Raoul Girardet puts it, often one with explicit claims to something like social science” (81–82). As stated above, allographic prefaces by highranking French colonial administrators or influential “hommes de lettres” were the norm for an African desiring or encouraged to publish a narrative in French during the interwar years. By validating colonial discourses, these preface writers accomplished their own agenda: in addition to providing the African author (or author of African descent) with an introduction to French publishers and readers, they promoted “la plus grande France,” its “mission civilisatrice” and the claim to beneficial effects of colonialism. BATOUALA’S PREFACE Maran’s authorial preface combined with his novel represent “both an inception of the tradition of the colonial novel and the exception to that tradition,” as B. Edwards formulates so aptly (81): it is the first novel by a black writer published in French, yet preceded by his own preface (this is, of course, just one of the ways in which Batouala is deemed an exception to the tradition). A preface acts as an opening discourse that spatially precedes the text, yet on the writing timeline it constitutes a closing discourse since it is written to accompany an existing text, observes Bokiba. He adds that whenever the author of the text is also the prefacer (as in the case of Batouala), “he claims the hermeneutical control over his work but recognizes, by means of the supplementary pre-addendum, the unfinished nature of his creation. The support of a preface implicitly constitutes an admission: the work by itself is not clear enough” (82).19 The argument of “incompleteness” of

Transnational Reception

175

the text without the preface is nevertheless not convincing in the case of Batouala, as revealed by a compelling fact divulged by Maran’s personal correspondence with his editor.20 The author points to his friends, Henri de Régnier and Jacques Boulenger, as those who recommended the preface to Batouala. Although both men are recognized for their goodwill and advice in the preface’s first paragraph, it is unlikely they can be held responsible for any of its content. Léon Bocquet suggested that Maran wrote the acrimonious foreword at a time when he was suffering from depression following his mother’s death, discrimination by his superiors and ten years of solitude in a remote district.21 That Maran stood by his preface—be it as a completion of the novel or as an unambiguous supplementary message—is confirmed by the definitive version of Batouala, published in 1938, in which Maran merely modifies details of the original preface, adding seven paragraphs at the end. There he states that seventeen years after the initial publication, the indictment against France’s colonial practices remains germane: the atrocious living conditions of the Africans as Maran described them in his preface were not investigated by the French government, while accounts by André Gide (in Voyage au Congo, 1927) and Denise Moran (in Tchad, 1934) had in the meantime confirmed the abuses reported in the preface of the 1921 edition of Batouala.22 A second intriguing aspect concerns Maran’s statements about his preaddendum in the novel’s translations. Though in the late 1950s he reiterated his refusal to have his novel republished in a French paperback version without his introduction (Violaines 40), he insisted as early as 1922 on its removal from the translations since it would serve as anti-French propaganda—as predicted by French right-wing journalists.23 It is precisely his apprehension about damaging France’s international reputation that illustrates the author’s unwavering patriotism that was so aggressively questioned by his attackers. Hence, out of loyalty to his adopted homeland, France, Maran feels compelled to sacrifice the “completeness” of his literary work or a heartfelt message (depending on how one interprets the pre-addendum) by amputating part of its paratextual material from the translations, thus wittingly reorienting the text’s reception in the foreign context. To what extent the author’s directions were respected will be discussed below. As has been demonstrated, ideological debates focusing on the preface entirely overshadowed media attention for the literary aspects of the novel.24 Moreover, the tenuous connection between Batouala’s preface and the actual novel has indeed puzzled critics and scholars alike, convincing some that no clear relationship exists between the two, an argument in favor of the preface as an “afterthought,” as was in fact confirmed by Maran in his correspondence. The dichotomy between preface and novel is described by one of the journalistic critics as follows:

176

Chapter 5

The preface is resolutely negrophile, and denounces virulently the abominations allegedly committed by our colonial administrators in Equatorial Africa. The novel doesn’t show us any of the horrors attributed to whites in general, and the French in particular; it does, however, describe all kinds of abject orgies and sinister crimes to which the good Negroes resort, without any participation by Europeans. I dare to insist that the text and its preamble do not go together very well. (Paul Souday, Le Temps, December 15, 1921; qtd. in Porra, L’Afrique 82)25

Having taken in the preface’s accusations, one would expect an Afrocentric story about alcoholic colonial authorities submitting helpless natives to atrocities.26 The criticism of the white man uttered by the village chief Batouala constitutes nonetheless a mere detail in a novel whose description of the ga’nza ritual of circumcision and excision as well as references to cannibalism are much more likely to shock the Western reader (as well as the African évolué). Allen describes this paradox fittingly: “Batouala’s refusal to follow its Preface’s explicit denouncement of European civilisation with a narrative reversing the civilised-versus-savage dichotomy in Africa’s favour perplexed readers” (111).27 Ambiguity is also created by the text’s double perspective. While Maran’s voice in the preface is imploring the French authorities to investigate the wretched living conditions of the indigenous people in Ubangi Shari, the novel draws the reader into chief Batouala’s viewpoint via his interior monologues, a voice that Maran reproduces with almost ethnographic detail, as he assures us in his preface. As a colonial administrator in Ubangi Shari, he spent six years observing and “translating” what he heard. His preoccupation with the accurate representation of reality from the perspective of an indigenous African chief prompts him to state: “Regarding the Europeans I only say what the natives voice in their judgment about them” (Fayolle quotes Maran 25).28 It is, therefore, also Maran’s thirst for truth and moral integrity that leads him to express his personal view on France’s colonial situation solely in the paratext. The preface allows him to convey his impassioned message, albeit in hindsight not intended for a foreign readership potentially keen to exploit it on a political level. Finally, ambiguity lingers also around the persona of René Maran: a West Indian Frenchman of African descent educated in France since early childhood, he remains loyal to his homeland that he serves as a colonial administrator—he is not anti-colonialist, but criticizes colonial abuses29—yet he is also a black man witnessing the suffering of fellow black men and women.30 In this almost untenable, conflicting position that the humanist Maran occupies it is his moral integrity that is first questioned and then attacked.31 Considered by Césaire, Senghor and Damas as “the inspirer of the Negritude

Transnational Reception

177

movement” (Onana 181)32 Maran, a precursor in the true sense of the word, paves the way for the next generation of black writers. In the above, the power of the literary pen and the nexus of literature and the political enterprise have been adequately demonstrated by Batouala’s reception in France where the text was appropriated and instrumentalized by various factions representing diverse literary but mostly opposing ideological standpoints. Eugène Pujarniscle aptly formulated the instrumental relevance of literature with respect to the status of France’s colonies in the early 1930s: “The security, the peace, the prosperity of our colonial possessions depend, in part, on the way writers talk about these issues [. . .] it is clear that, of all the forms of propaganda, the most effective is propaganda through the arts, and particularly, through literature” (Ngate quotes Pujarniscle, 51).33 By 1928, Batouala was considered a “dangerous” book and banned in all French colonies (Herdeck 4). The various ideological battles that accompanied Batouala as it entered new literary fields in translation will be discussed in the next section. More specifically, two paratextual elements —the subtitle and the preface—as well as the text’s critical reception will be evaluated in order to illustrate the various ways in which the novel was instrumentalized in new contexts. BATOUALA’S RECEPTION IN GERMANY In the case of the German translation of Batouala, the two framing gestures of deformation and manipulation as described by Damrosch substantially reoriented the novel’s reception and interpretation.34 The German translation by Claire Goll—Batuala, ein echter Negerroman—was published at the beginning of 1922, approximately six months after the French version, a very short time interval indeed for a translation of a literary text, even compared to current standards. Why this precipitation? According to Porra, far from intending to spread anti-French propaganda or to challenge decisions taken by the League of Nations regarding the occupation of Rhineland after World War I that fueled an acrimonious debate, Goll’s objective was to promote avant-garde black/African art (“l’art nègre”) in Germany by translating this “real negro novel.” The German edition was published by Rhein Verlag directed by Claire Goll’s husband, Yvan Goll; both were strong supporters of avant-garde art and literature. It is presumably due to their emphasis on the aesthetics of the novel that the editors relegated Maran’s preface—excluding the geographical description of the region where the story is situated—to the end of the book. Obviously, this paratextual modification had important implications for the reading and the interpretation of the novel, as pointed out by Porra, since the vitriolic attack on the French colonial system now

178

Chapter 5

followed the literary text: “The dialectic relationship between the text of the preface and the text of the novel is completely distorted” (L’Afrique 94).35 As an afterword, Maran’s message became much less effective since it no longer functioned as a reading guide to the novel.36 Although in a second edition published in 1928 Maran’s preface was reinstated in its original position, the latest 2007 translation by Caroline Vollmann—Batouala: ein authentischer “roman nègre”—based on the definitive 1938 French version of Batouala, re-transferred Maran’s preface to the end of the novel. However, almost ninety years after its original publication the numerous obscure references to the 1920s’ cultural context would seem to justify this modified position given the limited effectiveness of the preface-turned-postface’s functioning as a preparatory reading guide. To clarify obfuscations, the editors resort to explanatory notes as an aid for the contemporary German reader.37 The 2007 edition also contains a lengthy afterword (“Nachwort”) by Jürgen von Stackelberg who contextualizes Maran’s work both within African history and in its francophone sub-Saharan literary tradition.38 The German scholar highlights Batouala’s literary qualities and praises its ethnographic accuracy, avoiding any allusion to the controversy created in France by the 1921 Goncourt winner and to the conflicted Franco-German relationship at the time of the novel’s publication. The various subtitles of Maran’s work also evince revealing modifications in the different German editions. It is no surprise that the Golls respected the original French subtitle by keeping its literal translation “ein echter Negerroman” (“a true negro novel”), although in light of the above their motives for doing so probably diverged from the French publisher’s. Desiring to promote avant-garde literature at a time when in Europe the “vogue nègre” reigned supremely in music and art, the Golls sought to advocate the authenticity of the novel’s aesthetics rather than the “negro-ness” of its writer. In the 1928 edition, the subtitle was modified to “the story of a negro” (“die Geschichte eines Negers”), erasing any reference to authenticity or claim to universality.39 Finally, in the latest 2007 edition, the subtitle “ein authentischer ‘roman nègre’” once more reflects the controversial debate surrounding the reception of the original French version. The inverted commas cushioning the partial French subtitle denote its specific historical function and reinstate authenticity as a historical marker of value. By contrast, in the 1920s, the reviews in the German press in fact questioned the authenticity of Maran’s “negro-ness,” as pointed out by Porra. One critic argued that if the author is European to a degree that he is able to write a novel, he does nevertheless share the color of his skin with “negroes” (Porra, L’Afrique 98). On the other hand, reviewers aiming to emphasize the polemical questions raised by the novel in the German context as mentioned above, emphasized Maran’s authenticity as a black man (Porra, L’Afrique 102) to

Transnational Reception

179

justify their indictment of French colonial practices.40 Still, Batouala’s literary qualities were rarely discussed in the German press. As will be illustrated in the next section, the reception in African American circles similarly underscored and exploited the significance of Maran’s “racial” identity and its consequences, albeit for different motives. BATOUALA’S RECEPTION IN THE UNITED STATES In 1922, Maran’s novel appeared in an English translation as Batouala— without a subtitle—by Adele Szold Seltzer, and was published by her husband Thomas Seltzer.41 Three years previously he had entered the publishing business in New York, first with a partner, then from 1919 continuing alone under the name Thomas Seltzer Inc. As an “experimental publishing firm” Seltzer brought out several of D.H. Lawrence’s controversial novels and became known as “the man who made Lawrence” (Lee Levin 219). Plagued by financial problems in a difficult time for the book trade, Seltzer was also prosecuted by the executive director of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice for spreading “pornographic” books.42 While this court case was in full swing, the Seltzers published the English translation of the controversial 1921 Goncourt winner. The idealist Seltzer did not shrink away from risks. Announcements and reviews appeared in the American press soon after the awarding of the Goncourt prize—before the English translation had come out—by reviewers, some of whom were unable to read the French original.43 However, as noted by B. Edwards, “what is remarkable about the black U.S. reception of Batouala is that it received rave reviews from all quarters of the ‘New Negro’ movement” (69).44 It should come as no surprise that these reviewers recognized in Maran’s novel a “‘counter-act’ because [it] is considered to represent the black modern speaking himself—a black voice that intervenes and that is inescapably metropolitan, current, and independent” (B. Edwards 82–83). William Ferris, for example, who himself was unable to read French, regarded the winning of the coveted Goncourt prize by “a Negro novelist” as “an inspiration to men and women of color everywhere” (“The Significance of René Maran”). To quote Ferris more extensively: “Usually when a man of color writes a book, a magazine article or delivers an address it is not rated by the Caucasian world according to its philosophic, scientific, historical or literary value, but according as it does or does not represent the Caucasian’s estimate of the Negro’s place in the scale of creation.” In the eyes of some African American critics, Maran’s consecration demonstrated that France as a country was less racist than their own. The emphasis was not so much on the text’s message as a condemnation of

180

Chapter 5

abusive colonial practices, as on its proof of the (virtual) absence of racism in France (Fabre 340–42). As demonstrated above, and pointedly observed by B. Edwards, “[Batouala’s] conundrum and the provocation [was] packaged in the book’s subtitle: ‘véritable roman nègre’” (81), a subtitle whose double entendre most American critics failed to understand. This could explain why the Seltzers completely eliminated the subtitle in the 1922 translation. The American reviewers seemed oblivious to the battle fought out in the French press apropos of the claim to verisimilitude as portrayed in French colonial literature, focusing primarily on the racial identity of the author.45 Contrary to the first German translation, Thomas Seltzer did go along with Batouala’s original French edition by actually prefacing (not postfacing) it by Maran’s foreword.46 In 1972, Black Orpheus Press in Washington D.C. brought out a translation of the definitive French 1938 edition under the title Batouala, A True Black Novel, introduced by Donald E. Herdeck.47 Herdeck was the idealistic founder of Three Continents Press in Washington D.C., launched in 1973 and focusing on “third world works.” He explains the importance of Maran’s novel within the African literary tradition as well as its contentious reception by the French métropole during the early 1920s. The most revealing paragraph in Herdeck’s introduction, nonetheless, is his description of the putative effect of the novel on its contemporary readership: The modern reader is likely to be disappointed that a book with A True Black Novel for a subtitle does not contain more protest, a more vivid dissection of the horrors of French colonial rule, and a more sympathetic portrayal of traditional African society. Even the preface, the most anti-colonial section of the book, is not a call for Blacks to unite against their colonial masters, but rather a plea to the French intellectual community to join Maran in a concerted protest against colonial abuses, a plea which was eventually heeded by many during the next half-century. (2–3)

Fifty years after its original publication, it is no longer the racial identity of the author that maintains a residual hold over the readers’ imagination but the “mildness” of Maran’s attack on the colonial regime from a postindependence perspective: the chronotope and horizon of expectation have evolved. In 1973, Heinemann Educational Books in the United Kingdom issued Batouala’s new translation, including Herdeck’s foreword, in its African Writers Series. As observed in chapter 2, the French-language subSaharan novels that were singled out for translation by the African Writers Series notably during the 1970s reflected, according to Venuti, the appetite of European leftist intellectuals for critical representations of imperialist practices. By publishing the anti-colonial works of Mongo Beti, Ferdinand Oyono, and Ousmane Sembène, the series deliberately aimed to propagate an

Transnational Reception

181

African literature presenting the anti-colonial struggle and the clash of cultures. We must, therefore, place Herdeck’s cautionary remarks to the readers in this context receptive to a specific Western representation of African literature. As will be shown in the next section, the editorial framing of Maran’s text in the Dutch translation departs once again radically from the original, eventually eliciting diverging press responses in a cultural context and sociopolitical timeframe that, although partly overlapping with the novel’s reception as described above, will emblematize its continued instrumentalization. RECEPTION OF BATOUALA’S FRENCH EDITION IN THE NETHERLANDS What particular interest could be sparked by a study of Batouala’s translation and reception in the Netherlands and its largest colony, the Dutch East Indies, apart from illustrating the manipulation and deformation that a (translated) literary work undergoes when crossing linguistic and cultural boundaries? In what follows I intend to demonstrate certain similarities and differences between the source and the target culture of the text that are exploited in order to reinforce the construction of cultural identity and national subjectivity of the receiving culture. Venuti attributes these powers to a translation’s capacity “to form cultural identities, to create a representation of a foreign culture that simultaneously constructs a domestic subjectivity, one informed with the domestic codes and ideologies that make the representation intelligible and culturally functional” (The Scandals 159). As will be shown by Batouala’s reception in the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies, in order to perform these functions, a literary work in its original language (that is, untranslated) that radiates to a new cultural space can be manipulated in the same manner as a translation. The circumstances under consideration illustrate the fashioning not only of an image of the African reality represented within the novel but also comments on the role played by the colonizing regime, France, in order to solidify the development of the cultural identity and consciousness of the Dutch nation as a “progressive” colonizing power. Meanwhile, this process also capitalizes on references to a classic nineteenth-century Dutch novel Max Havelaar or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company—Max Havelaar in short—by the colonial administrator and author Multatuli, that was published in 1860. Before elaborating on the Dutch reception of Maran’s novel, a short introduction on some peculiarities regarding the cultural and literary context and tradition of the Netherlands is called for. As a small European nation, the role of the Netherlands in the twentieth century on a global scale is neither economically nor politically significant. The country’s marginal position is reflected accordingly both on a linguistic and

182

Chapter 5

a cultural level. As a peripheral linguistic space, the Netherlands have always been closely attuned to the cultural production and central languages of their more powerful neighbors: following several centuries of strong French influence, the anglophone domination has steadily intensified since World War II.48 However, during the period under consideration—the 1920s to the early 1930s that cover Batouala’s reception—it was still France’s cultural production that was scrupulously monitored by Dutch cultural critics and that served as a point of reference for the Dutch literary establishment. Proof of the Dutch cultural elite’s excellent understanding of the French language can be seen not only in the numerous French quotations in leading Dutch newspapers but also the significant reverberation in the Dutch press following the announcement of the 1921 Goncourt prizewinner. Concomitantly, this journalistic echo of Batouala’s recognition reflects the esteem in which French literature was held in Dutch literary circles at the time. But as will be shown, sensationalism was not foreign either to the reporting on France’s most prestigious literary prize. The consecration of Maran’s novel created a controversy that eventually resounded in the distant colony of the Dutch East Indies, a territory covering roughly the present-day archipelago of Indonesia where the United East India Company—de Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC—established its trading posts in the early 1600s. In this context, the drastic reforms introduced in 1830 by the governor general of Java, Johannes van den Bosch, need to be highlighted. Van den Bosch launched a forced cultivation system (“cultuurstelsel”), creating an organization of indirect governance by involving the local nobility—similar to the shift implemented by the French colonial policy from direct rule and assimilation to indirect rule and association in West Africa undertaken after World War I. Although this form of double exploitation did indeed raise tax revenues for the motherland—as was the objective—it also led to great hardship among the local population.49 The suffering of the indigenous people under this double tyranny formed the subject of the colonial novel Max Havelaar mentioned above. Its author, Edouard Douwes Dekker—publishing under his pen name Multatuli, Latin for “I have suffered greatly”—vigorously vilified the abuses of the indigenous people by the Dutch colonials. Similar to René Maran, Douwes Dekker worked as a colonial administrator, albeit in the latter’s case in the Dutch East Indies, where he witnessed the extensive injustices to which he testified. Yet, again similarly to Maran, designating Douwes Dekker as an “anti-colonialist” would approximate an anachronism. Illustrating the ultimate impact of the classic novel, the Indonesian writer Pramoedya qualified the text as “the book that killed colonialism”: The publication of “Max Havelaar” in 1859 [sic] was nothing less than earthshaking. Just as “Uncle Tom's Cabin” gave ammunition to the American

Transnational Reception

183

abolitionist movement, “Max Havelaar” became the weapon for a growing liberal movement in the Netherlands, which fought to bring about reform in Indonesia. Helped by “Max Havelaar,” the energized liberal movement was able to shame the Dutch Government into creating a new policy known as the ethical policy, the major goals of which were to promote irrigation, interisland migration and education in the Dutch Indies. (Pramoedya)

Publication of Max Havelaar ultimately had a political impact on Dutch colonial policies even though it took until 1870 for the “cultivation system” to be entirely abolished. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Dutch critics did not shun away from proudly epitomizing Multatuli’s novel since it functioned as a model and an intertextual point of reference for the educated Dutch reader, as will be evident from the press articles on Batouala presented below. Conversely, the French Ministry of Colonies denied Maran’s allegations refusing even to investigate the facts he presented in his preface, facts that were corroborated by staunch detractors of the colonial regime in the late 1920s and early 1930s, such as André Gide and Denise Moran in their travel writing, as mentioned above.50 The announcement of the 1921 Goncourt prize awarded to Batouala generated a first wave of sustained media attention in the Dutch press that faded out in the course of the next year. The second phase was triggered in the summer of 1928 by the Dutch translation brought out by Mulder & Co, a small publisher in Amsterdam. Contrary to several other translations of Batouala that appeared within a year after publication of the French version—such as the English, German and Spanish, Swedish and Hungarian—a period of six and a half years elapsed between the publication of the French and the Dutch version, an interval that considerably altered the publishing chronotope.51 The first of a series of articles of varying length on the subject of Batouala appeared in the daily national newspaper De Telegraaf on December 17, 1921, two days after the announcement of the 1921 Goncourt winner at the Drouant restaurant in Paris (“De Goncourt-prijs”).52 The outcome of the high-profile annual literary ritual certainly baffled the Dutch press. Again, it was not, in the first place, literary considerations that aroused the interest of a certain category of media, rather the scandalmongering implications of the judges’ selection. De Telegraaf reported in detail on the contenders for the prestigious prize as well as the voting procedures, whereas the only information revealed about the author was his position as a colonial administrator near Lake Chad. In fact, this populist, right-wing newspaper was exclusively interested in the polemic stirred in French literary and political circles by the Académie Goncourt’s selection. In February 1922, it reported the request by a member of the French parliament that René Maran be prosecuted (“De Prix Goncourt en de politiek”) and in March 1922 it referred to two letters by a

184

Chapter 5

member of the Goncourt jury, Jean Ajalbert, refuting criticism concerning the jury’s choice (“Rondom de ‘Academie Goncourt’”). The sensational aspects of the full-fledged scandal or “Batouala affair” (“la Querelle de Batouala”)53 continued to sprinkle the “faits divers” (news in brief) pages of the Dutch daily newspapers (mainly De Telegraaf) far into 1922. The less superficial elements of the Dutch written press brought into focus the literary and political aspects of Maran’s novel, from the end of 1921 and throughout the following year. A comprehensive and balanced perspective on Batouala was issued in the progressive daily paper Algemeen Handelsblad on December 24, 1921 (Sée).54 The review comprised various elements also emphasized by the French left-wing press, such as the author’s “race” lending him the authority and credibility to write about African natives and justifying the novel’s subtitle; an extensive quotation (in translation) from Maran’s critical preface (without expressing any judgment); the unexpected “mildness” of the short novel (the actual text), that is, the quasi-absence of attack on the colonial establishment following the preface’s harsh indictment; finally, the reviewer’s appreciation of some aspects of Maran’s literary talent, in spite of his preference for another prix Goncourt contender. Two literary journals, Den Gulden Winckel (Permys) and Nederland (Greshoff) presented scathing critiques. While Greshoff seemed mystified by the choice of the Goncourt Academy, Permys outright declared its loss of all prestige: a negro without talent had created a monster to serve negrophile propaganda. Greshoff took serious issue with the subtitle, doubting Maran’s identity as a “real negro,” since he was westernized. (This argument was also put forward by German critics.) Greshoff even questioned the author’s sincerity, and considered the book an insult to the black race. The reviewer for Nederland also mentioned the preface’s indictment of French colonials, recognizing their despicable behavior, but arguing that it was unjust to generalize.55 All these arguments had been put forward in the French conservative press and seemed to buttress the claim that (partial) rejection of Maran’s ideological message correlates with an onslaught of his work’s literary qualities. A refreshing perspective was contributed by Henri Borel, the author of an article entitled “Negro literature,” who advocated Maran’s novel while broadening the discussion to the topic of the sociopolitical position of the black man and woman on an international level.56 Acknowledging the prevalence of political motives for its selection by the Goncourt Academy, Borel insists on Maran’s talents as a writer, equal to any Western writer’s talent. Then, commenting extensively on the ideological implications of the text, Borel asserts that a growing self-awareness and emancipation of the black writer in general is to be expected. The black man no longer accepts the white man as his superior. However, the most striking element in the review is the critic’s inclusion of an international perspective on Maran and his novel as well as

Transnational Reception

185

Borel’s scorching attack on segregation in the United States.57 After reminding the reader that in the Netherlands black writers are not prominent, he contends that in the United States (and England), “negroes” are discriminated and treated as inferior human beings, a situation of which the Dutch are quite ignorant: In the United States, a country said to be so democratic and enlightened, a negro is not a human being but a “nigger” [this word is in English in the Dutch original]. Segregation of whites and Negroes is almost like segregation of human beings and beasts. In Europe, it is not widely enough known how scandalously in many (not all) states the negroes are treated as an inferior race, and the true statistics of lynchings will probably not be published any time soon. (Borel, Neger literatuur 35)58

Borel provides several examples of race discrimination in the United States quoting at length the black poet Claude McKay. Finally, Maran’s attack on the French colonial system brings the critic to a comparison with the Dutch East Indies: he evaluates the situation in the “French Congo” as far worse!59 As a matter of fact, the “negro question” in the United States, “one of the most thorny problems in America,”60 is also the subject of an article entitled “The Negro speaks” in the daily paper Algemeen Handelsblad that includes a reference to Batouala. The author of the article, a Dutch correspondent in New York, explains to the Dutch readers that despite equality of all citizens before the law in the United States, in practice this is of little use to the “Negroes,” most of whom are tied down to the fields in the Southern United States. Even if they succeed in climbing the social ladder by virtue of the educational system, they will invariably be confronted with the impossibility of social equality. This status quo is actually confirmed (and allegedly approved) by President Harding, the American president at the time. Couched in an accusatory description of the African Americans’ rights violations in the United States, the great injustice committed against the Africans by the abusive colonial system as described in Batouala serves as an illustration of the correspondent’s argument. The critic then makes an interesting connection between René Maran and the nineteenth-century fighter for social justice in the Dutch colonies, Multatuli, the author of Max Havelaar. In the face of this (American) inequity, one has the tendency “as an impartial European,” (“als onpartijdig Europeaan”) according to the correspondent, to declare oneself precipitately the “Multatuli of America”!61 Again, the reporter’s smug attitude reveals a sense of pride in his nation’s superiority when it comes to the treatment of its nonwhite fellow human beings. Borel’s remarks thus contribute to the construction of certain domestic values as well as specific cultural identity traits: the Netherlands as an

186

Chapter 5

“enlightened” colonial nation that leads by example in its humane treatment of its citizens and subjects. Nonetheless, in another article entitled “The Negro-cult in France,” France is the country that is most explicitly praised for its “Negro culture” and offset against the reprehensible US situation. The author, Burton Dancy, blissfully generalizes, “France with its large colonial population doesn’t have a problem with ‘colored persons.’ On the other hand, there has existed from time to time a problem with ‘whites.’”62 The writer goes on to illustrate this with an anecdote about (white) Americans who, when visiting a club in Paris, complain about the presence of an African dignitary and his wife and demanding their removal from the premises. A few days after the Americans’ request has been granted, the African dignitary receives an apology from the French secretary Briand, expressing his disapproval of the incident. Burton Dancy then reassures the reader that the French honor their famous slogan “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité,” though admitting that the French do not always put in practice the principle of fraternity. Nevertheless, the journalist reminds us, although in France a white woman is not eligible to run for the office of Member of Parliament, a Negro can become president of the French Republic! France’s attachment to the idea of equality is then exemplified by René Maran as the recipient of the most prestigious French literary prize, without, of course, mentioning the scandal that the event provoked. As stated above, it is exactly this exemplary role of the black man’s potential in France that was emphasized in the African American press at the expense of the novel’s literary merits and additional ideological ramifications. In fact, Burton Dancy is shamelessly perverting Maran’s message: he revises an attack on the French colonial regime into praise for France’s egalitarianism and an onslaught on a racist United States. Several reviews in the liberal Dutch press refer to Maran’s novel in the context of the publication in 1923 of the anti-Batouala work, Koffi, roman vrai d’un noir. Its publication was widely regarded as an attempt by the French literary establishment, in collusion with the colonial administration, to confiscate and reappropriate Batouala’s “true negro voice” and combat on a fictional level what is interpreted as Maran’s “subversive” stance. In an article entitled “French colonial literature,” Henri Borel compares Koffi, roman vrai d’un noir to Batouala, both from a literary and a political perspective.63 First, he evaluates Gaston-Joseph’s literary talent as inferior to Maran’s, illustrating his argument by contrasting both authors’ descriptions of the natives’ dance. In addition, Borel rightly questions the role played by the French Ministry of Colonies in the publication of Koffi. The critic does not fail to emphasize Koffi’s allographic preface—qualified as “authoritative, arrogant and moving” (“een magistrale, hooghartige en ontroerende Préface”)—by the former governor general, Gabriel Angoulvant, as a

Transnational Reception

187

response to Maran’s authorial introduction to Batouala. Once more, Borel makes the connection with the Dutch colonial situation. Angoulvant’s allusion to France’s “mission civilisatrice,” he points out, echoes the arguments that are so often heard in the Dutch parliament: that it is our duty to lead these indigenous people that have been entrusted to us (“aan onze voogdij toevertrouwd”) to better social conditions. The reviewer recommends “this strange book” to those who want to understand the “mind/soul” (“psyche”) of a Javanese servant (in the Dutch East Indies) by comparing it to Koffi’s. In other words, in certain regards the novel is considered instructive for the reader desiring to understand Dutch colonial natives.64 Borel’s response typifies Jauss’s emphasis on the relevance of the text (Koffi) as part of a paradigm of previous texts (Batouala), creating connections and contrasts that orient its reception. In this instance, the association is established between Koffi and a text originating from the same cultural and linguistic space, Batouala, that is the source culture, a culture one may assume that the critic—not necessarily the reader—is familiar with. We will return later to the role played by the literary paradigm of the target culture. RECEPTION OF BATOUALA’S FRENCH EDITION IN THE DUTCH EAST INDIES In view of France’s and the Netherlands’ shared status as European colonizing nations in the 1920s and 1930s, the question of the journalistic reception of Batouala by the colonial press in the Dutch East Indies is a germane one. During the first wave of articles published in the Netherlands just after the announcement of the Goncourt prize, how does this reception in the Dutch East Indies distinguish itself from the response in the metropolitan press? In three articles dedicated to Maran’s novel in the Dutch colonial press, the first, most favorable, is published in the Bataviaasch nieuwsblad, a progressive newspaper critical of the colonial government (Heymans). Notwithstanding the “blackface-like” description of René Maran “with the frizzy hair and the large protruding lips typical of his race,”65 that vouch for his authenticity as a black author, the review is the only one mentioning the participation of Black African soldiers in World War I and the sacrifices they suffered for the French mother country: “The French negro soldiers were in no way inferior to their white fellow combatants. During the war, they sacrificed their blood and life like the best Europeans for France’s cause, a country of which they were free citizens” (Heymans).66 It is also the only article referring to the smear campaign against the black French occupying forces in Germany after World War I, thus underscoring the political and international dimensions of Maran’s text.

188

Chapter 5

The ideological stance of the two remaining colonial reviews published in De Indische Courant is a much more conservative one, while the tone is self-congratulatory (“Letterkundige kroniek” and “Een negerroman.”) In the first article, the critic, identifying strongly with the colonials, contrasts their perspective with the Europeans’ viewpoint: “We, Dutch colonials, will look [. . .] somewhat differently at Maran’s colonial novel than the Dutch and the French literary critics”67 since, the critic argues, the African natives in the French colony in many ways resemble the indigenous people in the Dutch East Indies, at least on a psychological level. (Their shared status of colonized population appears not to have crossed the reviewers’ mind as an explanation for this similarity.) On an intellectual level, he appraises the Dutch East Indies native as quite superior to the African. Both reviews compare Batouala to the Dutch colonial novel Max Havelaar, thus establishing an unambiguous connection with the existing literary paradigm of the target culture, as described by Jauss. This association facilitates the integration of the novel into the readers’ horizon of expectation. Furthermore, the reviewers add, Multatuli’s talent surpasses by far Maran’s, whose preface is evaluated as weak, artificial and unconvincing. In these articles, the Dutch colonials clearly define their own identity as separate from the Dutch homeland, yet, supposedly, connected with “their natives,” thus strengthening their sense of colonial subjectivity. RECEPTION OF BATOUALA’S DUTCH TRANSLATION IN THE NETHERLANDS The second wave of references to Batouala in the Dutch metropolitan and colonial press is prompted by the publication of the Dutch translation in the summer of 1928 under the sensationalistic title Batouala, ruwe liefde, that literally translates as “Batouala, coarse/crude love.”68 The subtitle “véritable roman nègre” of the French version—underscoring the authenticity of its author and his story—has been dismissed altogether by the Dutch publisher and replaced by an allusion to the content of the novel: the adulterous relationship between Yassigui’ndja, Batouala’s favorite wife and the chief’s rival, Bissibi’ngui. The transferred epithet “coarse/crude,” linked in the title to “love,” actually qualifies, of course, the “primitive” people in their indigenous society. While in the French interpretative framework, the battle for the “authentic” representation of the native Africans under colonial rule and France’s image in the world was foregrounded, in its new literary context, the question of the writer’s authenticity has become subordinate to alluring the potential reader with a catchy title. A second far-reaching intervention in Batouala’s Dutch paratext is the removal of Maran’s preface and the insertion of an allographic

Transnational Reception

189

introduction by a best-selling author, A.M. de Jong, member of the Dutch Social-Democratic Labor Party (the SDAP). Whether the original preface was eliminated to respect Maran’s request or abandoned due to references that might have become obscure for a Dutch audience in 1928 is unclear. In any event, in his introduction the liberal de Jong makes no attempt to hide his political views (which would probably have appealed to Maran had he been able to read a translated version). With cutting sarcasm, de Jong rebuts white superiority, attested by this great literary work written “perchance” by a black man. Contrary to some of the self-congratulatory Dutch journalists, de Jong’s attitude to his home country is critical. Though consecrated with the Prix Goncourt in France, he argues that in the Netherlands Maran would have been placed in custody for incitement to violence against the state. Nonetheless, in regard to their colonization practices, the French in Africa, the Dutch in the East and the English in India do bear resemblance. For all of these so-called civilized Christian Europeans, Maran constitutes a role model, asserts de Jong (Voorwoord 7), who similarly to critics mentioned above, places the novel in an international context. The publication of Batouala’s Dutch translation enticed only a handful of critics to write a short article or review. What these reviews nevertheless illustrate is the change in chronotope, notably the significance of the elapsed time and concurrent sociopolitical shifts since the publication of the French edition. The “vogue nègre,” the Harlem Renaissance across the Atlantic, and numerous literary as well as scientific (ethnological) publications have had their repercussions on the cultural West-European landscape during the preceding decade. On the other hand, the changes in the paratext of Batouala’s Dutch translation—that is, the omission of Maran’s accusatory preface and its reframing by de Jong’s introduction as well as its modified subtitle—cannot have failed to impact its reception either. Be that as it may, what we can conclude from the articles in the Dutch metropolitan press in 1928–1929 is that none of the reviewers dismiss Maran’s criticism of the French colonial system as exaggerated or too generalizing. On the contrary, while a reporter of the Rotterdamsch nieuwsblad (“Boekenschouw”) comments with sarcasm on the “blessings” Europeans bestow on the indigenous people of Africa, the Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant expresses the most barbed critique on this topic: “The offending and cruel manner in which whites treat and exploit the native people has not been exaggerated in this book. Numerous other novels, travel books and reports by eyewitnesses confirm this.”69 The press commentaries apropos of the 1928 Dutch translation distinguish themselves from the first wave of articles in 1921–1922 in two additional ways. Not only does one of the critics pick up on the transferred epithet, mentioning the “coarse” (“ruwe”) morals of the native Africans—he also regrets the function of the title as a marketing gimmick—but more importantly,

190

Chapter 5

reviewers issue a warning on the inappropriateness of Maran’s novel for a juvenile audience.70 Obviously, in its Dutch translation—less bowdlerized than for instance the 1922 English translation by Seltzer71—the novel targets a much wider domestic readership than its original French version (available in the Netherlands since 1921). RECEPTION OF BATOUALA’S DUTCH TRANSLATION IN THE DUTCH EAST INDIES In fact, the question of “unsuitability” or “immorality” plays a dominant role in the censorship exercised by certain authorities in the Dutch East Indies and governs all references to Batouala’s Dutch edition, both in the metropolitan and in the colonial press during the 1929–1930 period. In a lengthy article, entitled “Postal censorship in Dutch East Indies,” the prefacer of the Dutch translation, A. M. de Jong, expresses his outrage at the return to the publisher of several copies of Batouala.72 Together with the Decameron, the Dutch East Indies postal services returned these copies because of their “immoral nature” (“onzedelijken aard”). Quipping about the “good company” in which Batouala finds itself—that is, the Decameron—de Jong questions the authority of the postal services to judge the morality of any type of literature. Following the publication of de Jong’s request, a member of the Dutch parliament, the social democrat Cramer, demands clarification from the secretary of the colonies concerning the motifs for this ludicrous censorship by the Dutch East Indies postal services (“Batouala geweigerd”).73 In addition, Cramer wonders whether the politician is aware of Batouala’s great artistic value including the prestigious accolade that it was awarded, that is of course, the prix Goncourt. Several days later, a journalist reports that as per the international postal treaty of Stockholm, the board of directors of the postal services has the right to censure “pornographic” content. On March 1, 1930, the newspaper Algemeen Handelsblad finally announces that the secretary of the colonies, de Graaff, confirms the discovery of “immoral passages” in Batouala, ruwe liefde and corroborates the right of the Dutch East Indies postal offices to censor this type of book (“Batouala. Antwoord”). He is nevertheless willing to consider involving the attorney general (“procureur-generaal”) of the Dutch East Indies Supreme Court in this kind of decision. Mr. Cramer, on the other hand, believes that the argument of “immorality”—which he fundamentally rejects—is used as a subterfuge for censorship. The actual justification for the ban, he asserts, is the description in the novel of “colonial situations,” that is, an attack on the French colonial system (“Gouvernementsbedrijven.”) In fact, Dutch colonials follow the example of their French counterparts who had banned the “dangerous” book from their territory in 1928. No proof

Transnational Reception

191

exists for Cramer’s theory, but growing nationalism in the colonies following World War I inevitably flustered the colonial authorities. Whatever the grounds for censorship of Maran’s text in the Dutch East Indies, it infuriated progressives both in the motherland and in the colony. Dr. J. B. Tielrooy went as far as to write a satirical poem on the subject of the “lords of the postal services” acting as morality judges. It was published in a left-wing newspaper under the heading “Indian postal censorship. Keep your hands off!”74 The Dutch created, so to speak, their own “Batouala affair”! Batouala’s paratextual presentation and critical reception, both in France and several foreign literary fields, illustrate how in varying degrees a literary work “take[s] on a new life” and “becomes reframed in its translations and in its new cultural contexts” (Damrosch 24) to represent viewpoints shaped by new chronotopes and changing horizons of expectation. It should be noted, however, that the Dutch reception of Batouala illustrates that “a new life” or deformation of the original text traveling to a foreign cultural space can also take place without translation of the work in question, even if (and despite the fact that) the reviewers have a perfect understanding of the original language (as presumably is the case with the Dutch critics). In other words, a shifting horizon of expectation with respect to a text’s reception, to speak with Jauss, can be created by a mere change in place of reception, and, therefore, does not require the passing of time. Of course, even within the same literary space, varying interpretations of a text exist side by side. As stated, in France both the left-wing as well as the right-wing press appropriated Maran’s novel for ideological purposes in the wake of its consecration by the Goncourt prize. The German edition revealed the predominantly aesthetic motives of the publisher that clashed with its contemporary extreme rightwing political annexation in the press. Meanwhile, in the United States the significance attributed to the novel by the “New Negro” movement focused to a large extent on the racial identity of its author. As has been illustrated, Batouala’s reception in the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies reveals intrinsically Dutch idiosyncrasies, both from a cultural/literary and a political angle. Their specific journalistic discourses tend to strengthen the domestic/ colonial consciousness and positive identity construction in several regards. On a cultural/ literary level, the Dutch nineteenth-century colonial novel Max Havelaar with its “unquestionable” literary qualities, contrasts favorably with Maran’s text according to the critics, while this assimilation also illustrates the relevance of Batouala’s smooth integration into an existing national literary paradigm. Ideologically, the discussion within a certain segment of the Dutch press (notably, the more progressive representatives) is raised to an international level, which is typical for a small nation focused on its more influential neighbors. Dutch reviews of Batouala include a diatribe

192

Chapter 5

against the treatment of Blacks in the United States as well as a glorification of France’s attitude to nonwhite citizens, thus entirely perverting Maran’s original message. As a representation of life in a French colony, Maran’s text is also relevant for the Dutch as a nation with a long colonial history. Several critics adopt a self-congratulatory tone and/or implicitly pride themselves in representing a nation that maintains “progressive” colonial practices. In spite of these rather smug observations, some Dutch critics underscore a utilitarian argument in favor of reading Maran’s text that is considered “instructive” for those dealing with natives in the Dutch colony. Finally, the censorship of Batouala’s Dutch translation in the Dutch East Indies and the indignation this foments in the Dutch metropolis are indicative of the diverging responses between motherland and colony, reflecting to a certain degree the situation in the French colonies where Maran’s novel was also censored.

NOTES 1. “Maintenant, va, mon livre, où le hasard te mène.” 2. René Maran (1887–1960) was born to Guianese parents on the ship that took the family from French Guiana to Martinique. From an early age he was educated in Bordeaux, France, when his father became a colonial administrator in French Equatorial Africa. Although passionate about poetry and literature—he published two volumes of poetry before Batouala—he followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a colonial civil servant and was virtually unknown in France when his first novel was published. 3. Ubangi Shari, also spelled Oubangui-Chari, was one of four colonies in French Equatorial Africa where Maran was stationed as a colonial civil servant from 1909 to 1923. 4. Genette refers to prefaces by the author of the text as “authorial” whereas he uses the term “allographic” for those prefaces by persons other than the author (Paratexts 196–293). 5. Besides being translated into English, German and Dutch, an edition of Batouala appeared in the following languages: Spanish (1922), Swedish (1922), Hungarian (1922), Polish (1923), Russian (1923), Hebrew (1929), Yiddish (1929) and Portuguese (1945). 6. Yet texts emanating from marginal literary spaces written by non-Western authors are usually more prone to ulterior deformation and assimilation than, for instance, Western classics, admonishes Damrosch (24–25). 7. Of course, authors and their work sometimes undergo a comparable fate in their home country. As will be illustrated in this chapter, both the French left-wing and right-wing press used Batouala to buttress their respective ideological position. 8. “l’adhésion aux principes du réalisme.” A complete rendering of Mouralis’s reference to realism runs as follows: “At the same time, this reference to the notion of novel reveals an aesthetic orientation, the adherence to the principles of realism,

Transnational Reception

193

since terms related to the category of the novelistic refer [. . .] to a ‘reality’ that is not questioned. (“En même temps, cette référence à la notion de roman est révélatrice d’une orientation esthétique, puisque les termes relatifs à la catégorie du romanesque s’articulent [. . .] sur un référent dont la ‘réalité’ n’est pas mise en doute” (“Pour qui écrivent les romanciers écrivains ?” 57.) 9. However, in correspondence between Maran and Albin Michel—archived in the editor’s files at the Institut Mémoires de l’Edition Contemporaine (IMEC) at the Abbeye d’Ardenne near Caen, France—the author simply refers to the manuscript as “Batouala.” 10. This contradiction is indirectly suggested by Geneste in regards to the responses to Maran’s book (2). 11. “‘un noir,’ ‘un frère de couleur,’ ‘un frère inférieur.’” 12. By annexing Germany’s African colonies, the allied forces broke in effect their promise made at the beginning of the war to exclude the colonies from the conflict, a situation to which the Germans referred as “the colonial guilt lie” (“die Koloniale Schuldlüge”). 13. Rubiales disputes the launching of a third reception phase at the moment of publication of Batouala’s German translation arguing convincingly that the “obsessive anticipation” of Germany’s reaction by conservative media had already been triggered by the awarding of the Goncourt prize in mid-December 1921 (134–35). 14. “le ‘mauvais livre’ devient le ‘livre mauvais.’” In this play on words Porra refers to articles in the French press. 15. The text was translated into English by Elaine A. Wood as Koffi, The Romance of a Negro. 16. Porra provides several other examples of “anti-Batouala fictional literature” (L’Afrique 115–21) (“littérature fictionnelle anti-Batouala”). 17. “C’est comme son titre l’indique, le Roman d’un Noir, et je suis tenté de dire l’Histoire, car c’est une histoire vraie, vécue, exacte dans ses moindres détails.” 18. Of course, one could argue that Maran himself, being educated in France, remained to a certain extent an outsider to the African continent. Yet there are those who recognized in his novel the description and sensitivity of “l’âme noire” (the black soul). Senghor honored him with the title “précurseur de la Négritude,” the first man who refused to choose between the labels “French writer” and “Black writer” (9–11). 19. “il revendique la maîtrise herméneutique de son oeuvre, mais reconnaît, à travers ce pré-addendum complémentaire, le caractère inachevé de sa création. L’assistance d’une préface est implicitement un aveu : l’oeuvre n’est pas assez parlante par elle-même.” 20. See Albin Michel files archived at the IMEC. 21. This psychological justification by Léon Bocquet is quoted in Geneste (21). 22. Hausser, who has analyzed the differences between the original and the definitive version of Batouala, concludes that Maran was mostly concerned about the literariness of the final version while adhering to the initial ideological message (94). 23. In a letter to Albin Michel on April 1, 1922, Maran wrote: “Regarding the translations [of Batouala], I mainly insist that my preface disappear from the authorization you might grant. As a matter of fact, it is used as anti-French propaganda that I

194

Chapter 5

could not foresee and that troubles me so much that I would have preferred not to be the Goncourt Prize winner.” (“Pour ce qui est des traductions [de Batouala], je tiens essentiellement à ce que ma préface disparaisse des permissions que vous pourriez accorder. On se sert d’elle en effet pour faire une propagande anti-française que je ne pouvais prévoir et qui me navre au point que je voudrais ne pas être lauréat du Prix Goncourt.”) (IMEC archives). 24. See also Fayolle; Porra, L’Afrique; and Allen. 25. “La préface est ardemment négrophile, et dénonce avec virulence les abominations que nos coloniaux auraient commises en Afrique équatoriale. Le roman ne nous montre aucune de ces horreurs imputables aux blancs en général, et aux Français en particulier ; mais il nous décrit toutes sortes d’orgies abjectes et de crimes sinistres où se plongent les bons nègres, sans que les Européens y aient aucune part. J’oserai insister que le récit et le préambule ne s’harmonisent pas très bien.” 26. See also the review by Georges Le Cardonell in La Revue universelle (105). 27. As a matter of fact, Allen’s objective in her study is to demonstrate how the reading of Batouala as a “jazz-text” transcends the various dichotomies. She bridges the gap between preface and novel by comparing their underlying unifying structure to jazz music, displaying its design including effects of repetition-with-difference, call-and-response, silence and words. 28. “Je ne parle de l’Européen que d’après les jugements qu’émet l’indigène sur son compte.” This is confirmed by his friend Léon Bocquet in “‘Préface’ à R. Maran,” Le petit roi de Chimérie. Paris: Albin Michel, 1924, qtd. by Geneste (20–35). 29. B. Edwards argues that Maran distinguishes between colonial and metropolitan France; in his “doubleness” he steps away “from any affirmation of black internationalist consciousness” and instead invokes in Bataoula’s preface the assistance of his fellow French writers, his ‘frères en esprit’ (brothers in sprit), who must take up the task of ‘condemning colonial abuses in the interests of ‘the nation of which [they] are the keepers’” (96). 30. In addition, he is the son of a colonial administrator in sub-Saharan Africa. See also Charles Onana who states: “It is certain that René Maran is not subversive. He is a colonial civil servant who does not question the colonial principle. He simply criticizes the abuses of French colonialism and in particular of certain colonizers” (78) (“Il est certain que René Maran n’est pas un subversif. C’est un fonctionnaire colonial qui ne remet pas en cause le principe colonial. Il critique simplement les abus du colonialisme français et en particulier certains colons”). 31. Maran’s humanist attitude shines through in Batouala when one of the chiefs declares: “A man is always a man, whatever his color” (75–76) (“l’homme est toujours un homme, quelle que soit sa couleur”). Further on, Maran personifies the sun thus: “He’s such a good old man, the sun, so impartial! He shines for all the living, from the grandest to the humblest person. He makes no distinction between rich and poor, between black and white” (112) (“C’est si bon vieillard, le soleil, si équitable! Il luit pour tous les vivants, du plus grand au plus humble. Il ne connaît ni riches ni pauvres, ni nègres ni blancs”). On Maran as a humanist see also Fayolle 25. 32. “l’inspirateur du mouvement de la négritude.”

Transnational Reception

195

33. “la sécurité, la tranquilité, la prospérité de nos possessions coloniales dépendent, en partie, de la façon dont en parlent les écrivains. [. . .] Or, de toutes les propagandes, la plus efficace est la propagande par les arts, et plus spécialement, par la littérature.” Pujarniscle, Eugène. Philoxène ou de la littérature coloniale. Paris: Firmin Didot, 1931, 5–6, qtd. and translated by Ngate (51). 34. For information on the German editions of Batouala before 1994, I am indebted to Véronique Porra’s chapter “Actualisations et concrétisations de Batouala, véritable roman nègre de René Maran” in L’Afrique (53–127) in which she analyzes the publication of the German translations and their controversial reception. 35. “la dialectique entre texte de la préface et texte du roman est donc totalement faussée.” 36. Genette describes the distinct functioning of preface and postface as follows: “for the author, and from a pragmatic point of view, the postface is much less effective, for it can no longer perform the two main types of function we have found the preface to have: holding the reader’s interest and guiding him by explaining why and how he should read the text” (Paratexts 238). 37. For instance, it provides information on Maran’s contemporaries mentioned in the preface, such as Henri de Régnier, Jacques Boulenger and Paul Reboux, author of Romulus Coucou. 38. In fact, the afterword by Jürgen von Stackelberg is a reworked version of an essay included in a volume on “classic authors from the black continent,” Klassische Autoren des Schwarzen Erdteils (1981). 39. In the 1928 edition, Batuala is combined with a translation of Maran’s Djouma, chien de brousse under the title Die Seele Afrikas (Africa’s soul), diluting as it were its political message (Porra, L’Afrique 94). 40. “Vollblutneger” is the term used in German, literally meaning “thoroughbred negro.” 41. The 1922 British translation (published by Jonathan Cape; the translator is unknown) added the subtitle “a negro novel,” thus erasing the term “true” yet retaining the exoticist attraction of the term “negro.” A 1932 translation simply mentioned “a novel.” Finally, the 1973 translation of the “definitive 1938 edition” published by Heinemann Educational in London added the subtitle “a true black novel.” 42. The three books considered obscene by the “self-appointed guardian of New York’s public morals,” John S. Sumner, were Women in Love, Casanova’s Homecoming, and A Young Girl’s Diary. Although Seltzer won this first battle with flying colors in the course of the year 1921, the court case was finally settled in 1925 after copies were taken out of circulation. Nonetheless, it led to the publisher’s bankruptcy in 1926 (Lee Levin). 43. To mention just a few examples: “Negro Wins Literary Prize: ‘Best French Novel’ of 1921 Deals With Life in Central Africa.” The Washington Post (18771922), December 18, 1921, p. 3. ProQuest. Web. Accessed October 4, 2019; “‘Batouala’ Wins Prize de Goncourt: Native Martinican’s Novel Awarded Highest French Literary Honor.” The Chicago Defender (National edition) (1921-1967), December 24, 1921, p. 1. ProQuest. Web. Accessed October 4, 2019; and “Negro’s

196

Chapter 5

Novel Wins Prix Goncourt: René Marin’s [sic] African Romance, ‘Batouala,’ Is Adjudged the Book of the Year.” New York Times (1857-1922), December 15, 1921, p. 4. ProQuest. Web. Accessed October 4, 2019. 44. Brent Edwards devotes part of the second chapter of his book on black internationalism, The Practice of Diaspora, to Batouala’s reception in the United States and its impact at the dawn of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s (“On reciprocity: René Maran and Alain Locke,” 69–118). 45. Maran himself, however, never identified himself as a “nègre” in the preface, B. Edwards points out (83). 46. A. and C. Boni, who took over the remnants of Thomas Seltzer’s publishing company after its bankruptcy, reprinted Adele Szold Seltzer’s translation in 1930. In 1932, a limited illustrated edition of Batouala, a Novel was published by Ltd. Editions Club in New York, translated by Alvah C. Bessie and illustrated by Miguel Covarrubias. 47. In the 1972 edition, Herdeck’s foreword preceded Maran’s preface. Additionally, whereas the 1922 translation contained some errors and was subjected to bowdlerization, this entirely new translation was “uncensored” and combined the linguistic talents of Barbara Beck and Alexandre Mboukou, a native from Congo, a country just to the south of Batouala’s Ubangi Shari, as Herdeck points out (6). 48. The more central the cultural production of a given country, the more it serves as an example for other countries and the lower its interest in the cultural production of foreign countries, notes Heilbron (439). Since 1945, English has evolved into the “hyper-central” lingua franca (see also chapter 1). 49. For detailed information concerning Dutch colonial history, I refer to J. van Goor’s volume on Dutch colonial history. 50. In the preface to the second, definitive edition, published in 1938, Maran bemoaned the French government’s inaction in the following terms: “An inspection team arrived in Chad in early January of 1922, that is to say at the time when the controversies my book had provoked was in full force. They should have looked into the facts which I had pointed out; that was even their most elementary duty. The opposite happened. They received orders to carry their research elsewhere” (Translation by Beck and Mboukou 13). (“Une mission d’inspection est arrivée au Tchad dans les premiers jours de janvier 1922, c’est-à-dire au moment où les polémiques que mon livre avait provoquées battaient leur plein. Elle aurait dû enquêter, c’était même son plus élémentaire devoir, sur les faits que j’avais signalés. Le contraire se produisit. Ordre lui fut donné de porter ses recherches ailleurs” [Maran, Batouala, 1938, 17].) 51. However, in a letter dated as early as December 24, 1921, the sizeable Amsterdam-based publisher Meulenhoff & Co inquired about the translation rights for Batouala, stating that they would not be able to pay much since Dutch is not an international language with access to an international market (Albin Michel files at the IMEC archives). 52. Two even shorter announcements appear in the regional papers Provinciale Overijsselsche en Zwolsche krant (December 15, 1921) and Delftsche Courant (December 16, 1921). All Dutch press articles for this study were accessed via the database Delpher http:​/​/www​​.delp​​her​.n​​l​/nl/​​platf​​orm​/p​​ages/​​helpi​​tems​?​​nid​=4​​62.

Transnational Reception

197

53. The “Batouala affair” was instigated by the French colonial administration that continued its endeavors to discredit Maran, accusing him, for instance, of causing the death of an African whom he allegedly manhandled. The case eventually led “to charges of manslaughter, a fine and suspension. Although Maran’s white assistant, Bonneveau, was directly implicated in the physical abuse of Mongo, Maran’s efforts to clear himself by requesting an autopsy failed. (. . .) Maran was now in the uncomfortable position of having been convicted of a crime for which he had criticised the colonial administration, giving his enemies further grounds for dismissing Batouala as a petty act of revenge” (Allen 11). According to Allen, it was ultimately Batouala’s Goncourt victory that cost Maran his job (31). 54. The article was reprinted in the colonial press: De Sumatra Post on July 2, 1922, and the Bataviaasch nieuwsblad on August 10, 1922. 55. To prove his point, Greshoff quoted Gratien Candace, a black man and member of the French parliament for Guadeloupe, who defended the equity of the French colonial system although he admitted that errors were made. Greshoff also pointed out the “contradiction” between preface and text. 56. The article was published in De kroniek; geïllustreerd maandblad voor Noord-en Zuidnederland, a monthly journal dedicated to the humanities. 57. Let us not forget that Maran himself comments on the topicality of the “Negro question” not only in France but also in Germany and the United States. He states in his preface to Batouala : “My book is not trying to be controversial. It appears, by chance, when its time has come. The Negro question is relevant. Who willed it so? Why, the Americans. The campaigns of the Outer Rhine [sic; German] newspapers” (Beck and Mboukou 9 (“Mon livre n’est pas polémique. Il vient, par hasard, à son heure. La question nègre est ‘actuelle.’ Qui a voulu qu’il en fût ainsi ? Mais les Américains. Mais les campagnes des journaux d’Outre-Rhin”; 11). For a discussion of Batouala and black internationalism, I refer to the second chapter of B. Edwards’s book The Practice of Diaspora: “On reciprocity: René Maran and Alain Locke” (69–118). 58. “In de United States, die zoo democratisch en verlicht heeten is een neger geen mensch maar een ‘nigger.’ De ras-afscheiding tusschen blanke en neger is daar bijna als die tusschen mensch en beest. Het is in Europa nog veel te weinig bekend, hoe schandelijk in vele (niet alle) staten de negers daar als minderwaardig ras behandeld worden, en een ware statistiek van lynchmoorden zal men daar wel wachten te publiceeren.” 59. Likewise, on a literary level, Borel refers to the Dutch East Indies, providing the example of a Javanese writer, Raden Mas Noto Soeroto who is capable of expressing himself as poetically and beautifully in the Dutch language as any Dutch man or woman of letters. Similar statements were made by Maran’s supporters regarding his mastery of the French language. 60. “een van Amerika’s neteligste problemen.” 61. One Dutch reporter literally refers to René Maran as the “French Multatuli” in “Brieven uit Brussel” (Provinciale Overijsselsche en Zwolsche Courant). 62. “Frankrijk met zijn groote koloniale bevolking kent geen ‘kleurlingen’ probleem. Aan den anderen kant is er wel eens van tijd tot tijd een ‘blanken’ probleem

198

Chapter 5

geweest.” It must be noted that although this article refers to Maran’s winning of the Goncourt prize, it was published much later than the previous ones: on February 22, 1930. 63. In this article, Borel also briefly mentions Le chef des porte-plume, roman de la vie coloniale by Robert Randau (Paris: Editions du Monde Nouveau, 1922). Purportedly, Randau’s novel confirms Maran’s accusation of the dissipated lives led by the French colonials, along with their ladies “of easy virtue” (des “femmes faciles”). 64. Reading the novel as an instructive guide is also recommended by one of the colonial newspapers for the Europeans living in the tropics. 65. “met het kroeshaar en de dikke, vooruitstekende lippen van zijn ras” 66. “de Fransche negersoldaten stonden in niets achter bij hun blanke medestrijders. Gedurende den oorlog gaven zij als de beste Europeaan hun bloed en leven voor de zaak van Frankrijk, waarvan ook zij vrije burgers zijn.” 67. “Wij, koloniale Nederlanders, zullen den kolonialen roman van René Maran [. . .] met ietwat andere oogen bezien, dan de Fransche en de Nederlandsche letterkundige critici.” 68. This is the only existing Dutch edition of Batouala. 69. “De krenkende en wreede manier, waarop de blanken de inboorlingen behandelen en exploiteren is in dit boek niet overdreven voorgesteld. Tal van andere romans, reisverhalen en mededeelingen van ooggetuigen bevestigen dit.” 70. See for instance “Lectuurbespreking.” 71. For instance, the Dutch description of excision in the ga’nza scene (Feitsma 86) is much more explicit than Szold Seltzer’s (103). Beck and Mboukou’s 1972 English translation follow the Dutch example. 72. “Postale censuur in Ned.-Indië!” The article includes a complete version of de Jong’s introduction to Batouala, ruwe liefde. 73. A copy of this article is found in several other daily papers, both in the metropolitan and the colonial press, such as Algemeen Handelsblad, Soerabaijasch Handelsblad and Het Nieuws van den dag voor Nederlands Indië. 74. “Indische postcensuur. Handen af!” The poem featured in the newly created journal De Stuw of the association for the advancement of social and political development of the Dutch East Indies.

Conclusion

The primary aim of the present book is to shed light on one of the myriad fringes of the World Republic of Letters, that is, francophone sub-Saharan narratives that eventually find their way to the new publishing space of the Anglo-American book market. The “fermenting” that takes place on this fringe comprises the value-making process accruing visibility of the corpus narratives and enabling them to cross-linguistic and cultural borders. At the outset, this study has taken a wide-angle on the complete corpus of narratives within the French and Anglo-American book market, focusing in a first instance on the publishers as influential agents. The Parisian hegemony in their production cannot be denied, though different types of presses dominated over time. For instance, whereas specialized publishers in France were essential in launching a number of African writers represented in our corpus, we observe that the latter garnered a growing interest from French mainstream presses (that have a more powerful marketing muscle and greater impact on international visibility), particularly since the turn of the millennium. At this juncture, sociopolitical circumstances in France and developments in the literary field coincided, favoring a heightened attention for francophone literature in general, including migrant novels and the sub-Saharan narratives of our corpus. Concurrently, these literary works were consecrated in greater numbers, not only by minor French literary prizes but also by one of the most prestigious Franco-French literary awards, the Renaudot prize. A wide-angle view of the corpus entering the Anglo-American book market revealed the gradually increasing contribution by American university presses—in particular the CARAF series published by the University of Virginia Press and the Global African Voices series issued by the Indiana University Press. By 2017, university presses produced, together with small independent, mostly nonprofit presses, the bulk (84 percent) of all translated 199

200

Conclusion

corpus narratives. In contrast with the French book market, the production (translation) by Anglo-American midsize to larger mainstream publishers of our corpus narratives dwindled to less than 1 percent. If these observations fail to surprise us—translated literature is generally not the terrain of the commercial sphere of production—it is nevertheless significant to note that educational (both Heinemann Educational Books as well as American university presses) and small presses have successfully kept these corpus narratives available, in print or an electronic version. University presses consider it part of their mission to keep paradigmatic texts available, both for their canonical value (determined by their editors, often academics) and for their relevance as social or anthropological documents, as “windows on the world.” Promoted expressly as “world literature” by small independent publishers, the tendency in general is to “denationalize” French or francophone literature on the Anglo-American book market where the source language is likely to be concealed. Literary and translation awards constitute one of the consecrating mechanisms affecting the trajectory of literary texts. By extending our scope of research and addressing both gender diversity and minority representation (including francophone sub-Saharan writers) with respect to these prizes, we observe a great lack of both before 2000—in the Goncourt and Renaudot prize, the Nobel Prize for literature as well as translation prizes and awards— although female translators were acknowledged by some translation prizes. It is the most recently established translation prizes and foreign fiction awards—the award-granting institutions established since 1990, and to an even greater extent those created since 2000, such as the French Voices Awards—that began to acknowledge our corpus narratives in the form of translation awards and grants. They also received accolades from institutions that support any-language-to-English translations—such as the American and English PEN awards—in an effort to promote literary diversity and intercultural understanding. Furthermore, the author names of certain recipients dominate the literary translational field, in particular the two Gallimard-published Renaudot winners, Alain Mabanckou and Scholastique Mukasonga, whose texts thereby accrue a maximum of symbolic capital. This selection corroborates the postulate of the “winner-takes-more market” or “Matthew effect,” where the same names monopolize the list of grantees and awardees. Nonetheless, even among recently established translation prizes gender disparity of authors remains significant. Although women’s systematic underrecognition, known as the “Matilda effect,” improved somewhat after 2000 (for instance in the case of the Renaudot prize, and as literary translators overall), it is only since the 2010s that awareness of this substantial imbalance has led to action, for instance in the form of the nomination of a larger number of female authors for existing literary prizes, the creation of specific

Conclusion

201

literary prizes for women and the establishment of presses that publish solely for women writers in translation. The fact that female writers overall occupy a minor position within the iniquitous literary field is also reflected in our corpus: a mere 23 percent are authored by African women writers, due partly to their belated emergence on the literary scene in the late 1970s. Several early canonical texts by women writers were issued by Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines in Dakar, and appeared in English translations before being published in France, in defiance of the overarching pattern that marks the recurrent trajectory of male-authored texts. These feminine texts, to which particularly anglophone academia was partial, were subsequently appropriated by the anglophone book market, at times attributing them a (Western) feminist interpretation in conflict with the representation in their local/source book market and even contrary to the authors’ intentions. Other narratives that resisted the label of “feminist”—such as work by Aminata Sow Fall or Ken Bugul—were not granted an afterlife in the Anglo-American book market. In regard to the dissemination of these generally underrepresented African female voices, the translator occupies a potentially interventionist position. As one of the primary agents of literary (re)production, translators often have the prerogative to select texts, especially once they have established a solid reputation and a relationship of trust with their publishers and their (living) authors. I have argued, for instance, that Dorothy Blair’s mission to translate francophone African women’s literature into English should be interpreted as a “political act” aimed at amplifying unheard female voices internationally. Idiosyncratic relations between different margins became particularly apparent in the case study of a single transnationally appropriated francophone novel, René Maran’s Batouala, a controversial text from the fringes that fomented “agitation” (“ferment”), both nationally in France as well as internationally. The analysis of its reception in various Western literary markets illustrates the minor articulations at play in the appropriation of this first francophone sub-Saharan text: in post–World War I Germany, by the New Negro movement in the United States and its reception by the “enlightened” colonial power of the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies. Moreover, Batouala’s Dutch reception revealed the most striking evidence of appropriation by means of a complete reversal of Maran’s original message, in an effort to reinforce a cultural identity and the national subjectivity of the receiving culture. The weight of a literary text’s translation into English—particularly with respect to those from peripheral languages and cultures—cannot be overstated: such a work becomes accessible not merely to a native audience, but also to a global readership, and will more likely be translated into another language (Allen 17). In recent years, the appetite for translated literature has

202

Conclusion

grown, even if only incrementally. “The widespread and enduring pessimism about the prospects for translated literature in the UK is outdated” (Chitnis et al.), concluded the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council in a report on the 2014–2016 period, while, in 2018, another report showed that the ubiquitously quoted “three percent rule” of translated books into English in the UK had, in fact, risen a few notches in the past few years, resulting in an increase to over 5.6 percent (Anderson, “Nielsen Reports”). In a similar vein, Laurence Marie, Cultural attaché and Head of the Book Department at the French Embassy in New York City, announced optimistically in 2014 that French translations had sold better than ever in recent years. A further encouraging indication for translated fiction is the creation in recent years of new translation prizes (not solely for women authors), such as the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) Literature prize launched in 2019, in partnership with the British Council, and in the United States, the prestigious National Books Awards for translated literature (Ross). These initiatives may also be interpreted as a reaction to a political climate of growing isolationism and xenophobia—which would confirm once more the interconnectedness of the literary and political fields, as propounded by Bourdieu. With respect to the translation prize added to the National Book Awards, Anderson emphasizes that this occurs in a context where “nationalism continues to influence American politics” (Anderson, “The US National Book Awards”). Similarly, he underscores the irony of a “Brexitian” UK whose interest in translated fiction is “overwhelmingly European” (Anderson, “Nielsen Reports”).1 Of course, it is impossible to predict whether this quixotic tilting at windmills will justify optimism in the long run, thus sustaining or expanding, even if only marginally, the Anglo-American market’s appetite for translated literature from the fringes. This recent trend regarding overall literary translation into the supercentral English language seems more timid, however, than the steadily gained momentum by the production of our corpus of translated francophone subSaharan narratives in the past two decades. Furthermore, an evolvement in thematic focus is discernable, from the prevailing anti-colonial theme in the 1960s and 1970s to a gradual emergence of stories highlighting the personal and the domestic. Constituting 30 percent of translated corpus narratives since 2010, these personal stories defy the stereotypical representation of a cataclysmic Africa in the media, including books with “themes and subject matters steeped in social concerns” that readers and publishers are looking for (Edoro). These texts resist the constructed and constantly reinforced image of the African continent by foregrounding both the individual/local and the universal (the equivalent of “the local minus walls” [Mabanckou, “The Song” 148]), in the sense that they are not in the first place appreciated for their relevance as social or anthropological documents—but then, of course, may

Conclusion

203

typically cater to an international audience partial to “world readable” literature. Since this study has charted exclusively the trajectory of francophone sub-Saharan narratives that reached the Anglo-American market, the analysis of this constructed image of Africa is necessarily incomplete. Translated African literature written in other European languages and indigenous African idioms should be examined as they participate in the creation of the continent’s representation in Western metropolises. Anglophone African literature has the added privilege of not needing a translation, thus facilitating access to the Anglo-American book market as well as metropolitan literary recognition. This is particularly true if authors straddle both the African continent and the Anglophone North, such as Nigerian-American Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Scottish-Sierra Leonian Aminatta Forna. If the overarching oppositional gestures—such as the core versus periphery theory, the distinction between the nonprofit versus the commercial hemispheres in publishing, or the consecrating power of Franco-French prestigious literary prizes versus the modest symbolic capital of translation prizes—have provided convenient initial tools for the analysis of our corpus, they are less helpful in explaining minor transversal articulations, that is deviances from these “comprehensive” premises. Examples are the precursor role of the Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique noire, the potential influence of a single translator (Dorothy Blair) or a small African publisher (Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines). The “fermenting” in analogous enclaves on the fringes provides opportunities for new research avenues. Furthermore, specific elements of consecrating instruments could be the subject of more in-depth research, such as the representation of minorities (women, ethnic minorities) in juries of literary prizes; the seal of approval by educational institutions as a supreme form of consecration, via the inclusion of titles on college course syllabi and as examination material; and the growing influence of literary consecration by “profane” online audiences via blogs and review forums. Additionally, comparable collections of texts as a base corpus are conceivable for a similar materialist research approach. The perspective of a different market could be envisioned, such as the German-language book market, since traditionally German scholars (and the University of Bayreuth with its African Studies program since 1975) have shown great interest in francophone sub-Saharan literature.2 Finally, it must be reiterated that the fundamental aim of this study is not to proffer truths about African literature, but to probe the perception, re-presentation and/or appropriation of a circumscribed African corpus of narratives by Anglo-American agents and agencies as they present these texts to their specific readerships. As illustrated in the preceding chapters, the perception of these literary works from the fringes varies according to their specific crossroads of time and space, their chronotope, and/or horizon

204

Conclusion

of expectations. This principle is also pointedly illustrated by the various interpretations of Brancusi’s sculptures, mentioned in the introduction of this book. Scholars have recognized diverging influences in his work: where Western European and American scholars perceived mostly his African inspiration by tribal art—especially in the carved wooden bases, the “netherworld” of the sculptures3—Romanians acknowledged mainly the influence of folk art of Brancusi’s native country, Romania (Chave 166). Although the sculptor was part of the Paris avant-garde scene since at least 1907, his work was virtually unknown in France until the 1920s. As was the case with many African writers residing in France in the course of the twentieth century with respect to the French literary landscape, Brancusi remained an outsider, a marginal on the modernist Parisian art scene until after World War II. Chave attributes his marginalization to ostracism and a segregated café life for French and foreign artists in 1920s Paris. In the United States, however, Brancusi’s sculptures garnered the greatest interest, “all but one of the solo exhibitions of Brancusi’s work held during his lifetime took place here [in the United States], where the majority of his works remains. Late in his life he contemplated moving to New York [. . .] and donating the contents of his studio to an American museum” (Chave 5).4 While Brancusi’s outsider position as an artist in France is reminiscent of the ghettoization of which some African writers complained until fairly recently, the explanation for the embracing of francophone texts by the Anglo-American book market, during distinct periods, is quite unequivocal: it lies, as we have seen, in the popularity of new disciplines in academia, such as women’s studies, postcolonial studies and world literature adopted by an array of courses in the humanities. The current opportunities and challenges faced by the francophone subSaharan writer with international ambitions are best described by the prolific, bi-lingual, and versatile Ivorian author, Véronique Tadjo: For young African writers trying to get published, things have got both easier and harder. Easier, because today, books written by contemporary African writers are not seen as “exotic” any more. They are part of “World literature,” a not so new concept that encompasses all sorts of literary and cultural influences. [. . .] A whole generation of francophone writers has been integrated into contemporary French literature. However, when we talk of “World Literature,” it seems obvious that it will only flourish if more books are translated into as many languages as possible, and certainly into English. Literature in French alone cannot reach the world. Harder, because the selection process for publication in the West is very tough and only a few lucky ones make it past the first hurdle. And, unfortunately, on the African continent, publishers usually struggle to find a viable market for their business (106).

Conclusion

205

NOTES 1. Another literary event that Anderson has linked to the political climate is the National Book Award’s 2018 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters awarded to the Chilean-American author Isabel Allende “in a time of rising hostility to immigrants in the Trumpian United States” (“National Book Awards”). 2. German is, after English, the language that the corpus narratives have most frequently been translated into. 3. This affinity was eventually disavowed by Brancusi himself. 4. “Margaret Anderson, a Little Review editor, remembered that ‘for years he worked alone, unknown, and without any thought of selling his work. Since America helped to establish him as the world’s greatest sculptor he has sold enough to live in comfort. He is better known to the public in America than in France’” (Chave 4; qtd. from My Thirty Years’ War 252, first published in 1930).

Appendix 1

Corpus Narratives and Translations

First editions only; multiple titles by the same author and multiple translations of the same work are listed in chronological order. Abou'ou, Jeanne Marie Rosette. Lettre à Tita. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2012. ———. Letter to Tita, translated by Maurice Ngompe. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2013. Adiaffi, Jean-Marie. La Carte d'identité. Abidjan: CEDA, 1980. ———. The Identity Card, translated by Brigitte Katiyo. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1983. Awumey, Edem. Les Pieds sales. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2009. ———. Dirty Feet, translated by Lazer Lederhendler. Toronto: House of Anansi, 2011. ———. Explication de la nuit. Montreal: Editions du Boréal, 2013. ———. Descent into Night, translated by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott. Toronto: Mawenzi House, 2017. Bâ, Amadou Hampaté. Kaïdara. Paris: Julliard, 1968. ———. L'Etrange Destin de Wangrin. Paris: Union Générale d'Editions, 1973. ———. The Fortunes of Wangrin, translated by Aina Pavolini Taylor. Ibadan: New Horn Press, 1987. ———. Kaïdara, translated by Daniel Whitman. Washington: Three Continents Press, 1988. ———. Kaydara, the Mysterious Journey, translated by Priye Iyalla and Elechi Amadi. Ibadan: HEBN Publishers Plc, 2012. Bâ, Mariama. Une si longue lettre. Dakar: Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1980. ———. Un Chant écarlate. Dakar: Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1981. ———. So Long a Letter, translated by Modupé Bodé-Thomas. Ibadan: New Horn Press/ London: Virago Press/ London: Heinemann Educational, 1981. ———. Scarlet Song, translated by Dorothy Blair. Harlow, Essex, UK: Longman, 1986. Badian, Seydou. Sous l'Orage (Kany). Paris: Présence Africaine, 1954 207

208

Appendix 1

———. Caught in the Storm, translated by Marie-Thérèse Noiset. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998. Barry, Mariama. La petite Peule. Paris: Mazarine, 2000. ———. The Little Peul, translated by Carrol F. Coates. Charlottesville, VA: UP of Virginia, 2010. Bebey, Francis. Le Fils d'Agatha Moudio. Yaoundé: Editions CLE, 1967. ———. Agatha Moudio's Son, translated by Joyce Hutchinson. New York: Lawrence Hill, 1967. ———. La poupée Ashanti. Yaoundé: Editions CLE, 1973. ———. Le Roi Albert d'Effidi. Yaoundé: Editions CLE, 1976. ———. The Ashanti Doll, translated by Joyce Hutchinson. New York: Lawrence Hill, 1977. ———. King Albert (of Effidi), translated by Joyce Hutchinson. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1981. Beti, Mongo (Eza Boto). Ville cruelle. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1954. ———. Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1956. ———. Mission terminée. Paris: Buchet Chastel, 1957. ———. Mission to Kala, translated by Peter Green. London: Frederick Muller, 1958/ Mission accomplished, New York: MacMillan, 1958. ———. Le Roi miraculé. Paris: Buchet Chastel (Corrêa), 1958. ———. King Lazarus, translator unknown. London: Frederick Muller, 1962. ———. The Poor Christ of Bomba, translated by Gerald Moore. Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 1971. ———. Perpétue et l'habitude du Malheur. Paris: Buchet Chastel, 1974. ———. Remember Ruben. Paris: Union Générale d'Editions, 1974. ———. La Ruine presque cocasse d'un polichinelle. Paris: Editions des Peuples Noirs, 1978. ———. Perpetua and the Habit of Unhappiness, translated by John Reed and Clive Wake. Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 1978. ———. Remember Ruben, translated by Gerald Moore. Ibadan: New Horn Press, 1980/ London: Heinemann Educational, 1980/ Washington: Three Continents Press, 1980. ———. Lament for an African Pol, translated by Richard Bjornson. Washington: Three Continents Press, 1985. ———. L'Histoire d'un fou. Paris: Julliard, 1994. ———. The Story of the Madman, translated by Elizabeth Darnel. Charlottesville, VA: UP of Virginia, 2001. ———. Cruel City (and Romancing Africa), translated by Pim Higginson. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2013. Beyala, Calixthe. C'est le soleil qui m'a brûlée. Paris: Stock, 1987. ———. Tu t'appelleras Tanga. Paris: Stock, 1988. ———. Le Petit Prince de Belleville. Paris: Albin Michel, 1992. ———. Loukoum. The ‘Little Prince’ of Belleville, translated by Marjolijn de Jager. Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 1995. ———. The Sun Hath Looked Upon Me, translated by Marjolijn de Jager. Oxford/ Portsmouth NH: Heinemann Educational, 1996.

Appendix 1

209

———. Your Name Shall Be Tanga, translated by Marjolijn de Jager. Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 1996. ———. Comment cuisiner son mari à l'africaine. Paris: Albin Michel, 2000. ———. How to Cook your Husband the African Way, translated by David Cohen. London: Cutting Edge, 2012. Bhêly-Quenum, Olympe. Un Piège sans fin. Paris: Stock, 1960. ———. Snares without End, translated by Dorothy Blair. Harlow, Essex, UK: Longman, 1981. ———. C'était à Tigony. Paris/Abidjan: Présence Africaine /Nouvelles Editions Ivioriennes, 2000. ———. As She Was Discovering Tigony, translated by Tomi Adeaga. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State UP, 2017. Bugul, Ken. Le Baobab fou. Dakar: Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1984 ———. The Abandoned Baobab: The Autobiography of a Senegalese Woman, translated by Marjolijn de Jager. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 1991. Dadié, Bernard. Climbié. Paris: Seghers, 1956. ———. Un Nègre à Paris. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1959. ———. Un Patron de New York. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1964. ———. Climbié, translated by Karen Chapman. London: Heinemann Educational, 1971/ New York: Africana Publishing Corporation, 1971. ———. An African in Paris, translated by Karen C. Hatch. Champaign, IL: U of Illinois P, 1994. ———. One Way. Bernard Dadié Observes America, translated by Jo Patterson. Champaign, IL: U of Illinois P, 1994. Dem, Tidiane. Masseni. Abidjan: Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1977. ———. Masseni, translated by Frances Frenaye. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State UP, 1982. Diabate, Massa Makan. Le Lieutenant de Kouta. Paris: Hatier, 1979. ———. The Lieutenant of Kouta, translated by Shane Auerbach and David Yost. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State UP, 2017. Diallo, Nafissatou. De Tilène au Plateau: une enfance dakaroise. Dakar: Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1975. ———. A Dakar Childhood, translated by Dorothy Blair. Harlow, Essex, UK: Longman, 1982. ———. La Princesse de Tiali. Dakar: Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1987. ———. Fary, Princess of Tiali, translated by Ann Woolcombe. Washington: Three Continents Press, 1987. Diome, Fatou. Le Ventre de l'Atlantique. Paris: Anne Carrière, 2003. ———. The Belly of the Atlantic, translated by Ros Schwartz and Lulu Norman. London: Serpent's Tail, 2006. Diop, Boubacar Boris. Le Cavalier et son ombre. Paris: Stock, 1997. ———. Murambi, le livre des ossements. Paris: Stock, 2000. ———. Murambi, The Book of Bones, translated by Fiona McLaughlin. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2006. ———. Kaveena. Paris: Philippe Rey, 2006.

210

Appendix 1

———. Les Petits de la guenon. Paris: Philippe Rey, 2009. ———. The Knight and His Shadow, translated by Alan Furness. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State UP, 2015. ———. Doomi Golo: The Hidden Notebooks, translated by Vera Wüfling-Leckie and Moustapha Diop. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State UP, 2016. ———. Kaveena, translated by Bhakti Shringarpure and Sarah Hanaburgh. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2016. Dongala, Emmanuel. Le Feu des origines. Paris: Albin Michel, 1987. ———. Les Petits Garçons naissent aussi des étoiles. Paris: Le Serpent à Plumes, 1998. ———. The Fire of Origins, translated by L. Corti. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 2001. ———. Little Boys Come from the Stars, translated by Joël Réjouis and Val Vinokurov. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001. ———. Johnny chien méchant. Paris: Le Serpent à Plumes, 2002. ———. Johnny Mad Dog, translated by Marie Louise Ascher. New York: Picador, 2005. Effa, Gaston-Paul. Tout ce bleu. Paris: Grasset, 1996. ———. Mâ. Paris: Grasset, 1998. ———. All That Blue, translated by Anne-Marie Glasheen. London: Black Amber, 2002. ———. Mâ, translated by Anne-Marie Glasheen. London: Black Amber, 2002. Efoui, Kossi. L'Ombre des choses à venir. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2011. ———. The Shadows of Things to Come, translated by Chris Turner. London/ Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2013. Fall, Malick. La Plaie. Paris: Albin Michel, 1967. ———. The Wound, translated by Clive Wake. Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 1973. Fantouré, Alioum. Le Cercle des Tropiques. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1972. ———. Tropical Circle, translated by Dorothy Blair. Harlow, Essex, UK: Longman, 1981. Gatoré, Gilbert. Le Passé devant soi. Paris: Phébus, 2008. ———. The Past Ahead, translated by Marjolijn de Jager. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2012. Hazoumé, Paul. Doguicimi. Paris: Larose, 1938. ———. Doguicimi: The First Dahomean Novel, translated by Richard Bjornson. Washington: Three Continents Press, 1985. Kane, Cheikh Hamidou. L'Aventure ambiguë. Paris: Julliard, 1961. ———. Ambiguous Adventure, translated by Katherine Woods. New York: Walker, 1972 /Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 1972. Kourouma, Ahmadou. Les Soleils des indépendances. Montreal: Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 1968. ———. The Suns of Independence, translated by Adrian Adams. London: Heinemann Educational/ New York: Holmes and Meier (Africana Publishing Company), 1981. ———. Monnè, outrages et défis. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1990.

Appendix 1

211

———. Monnew, translated by Nidra Poller. San Francisco: Mercury House, 1993. ———. En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1998. ———. Allah n'est pas obligé. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2000. ———. Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals, translated by Carrol F. Coates. Charlottesville VA: UP of Virginia, 2001. ———. Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote, translated by Frank Wynne. London: Heinemann Educational, 2003. ———. Allah Is not Obliged, translated by Frank Wynne. London: Heinemann Educational, 2006. Kuoh-Moukoury, Thérèse. Rencontres essentielles. Paris: Adamawa, 1969. ———. Essential Encounters, translated by Cheryl Toman. New York: MLA of America, 2002. Laye, Camara. L'Enfant noir. Paris: Plon, 1953. ———. The African Child/The Dark Child, translated by James Kirkup. London and Glasgow: William Collins Sons & Co, 1954. ———. Le Regard du roi. Paris: Plon, 1954. ———. The Radiance of the King, translated by James Kirkup. London and Glasgow: William Collins Sons & Co, 1956. ———. Dramouss. Paris: Plon, 1966. ———. A Dream of Africa, translated by James Kirkup. London and Glasgow: William Collins Sons & Co, 1968. Liking, Werewere. Elle sera de jaspe et de corail. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1983. ———. Amour-cent-vies. Paris: Publisud, 1988. ———. It Shall Be of Jasper and Coral AND Love-across-a-hundred-lives, translated by Marjolijn de Jager. Charlottesville: VA: U of Virginia P, 2000. ———. La Mémoire amputée. Abidjan: Nouvelles Editions Ivoiriennes, 2004. ———. The Amputated Memory, translated by Marjolijn de Jager. New York: The Feminist Press, 2007. Lopes, Henri. Le Pleurer-rire. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1982. ———. The Laughing Cry: An African Cock and Bull Story, translated by Gerald Moore. London/ New York: Readers International, 1987. Mabanckou, Alain. Bleu Blanc Rouge. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1998. ———. African Psycho. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2003. ———. Verre Cassé. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2005. ———. Mémoires de porc-épic. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2006. ———. African Psycho, translated by C. Schwartz Hartley. New York: Soft Skull Press, 2007. ———. Black Bazar. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2009. ———. Broken Glass, translated by Helen Stevenson. London: Serpent's Tail, 2009. ———. Demain j'aurai vingt ans. Paris: Gallimard, 2010. ———. Memoirs of a Porcupine, translated by Helen Stevenson. London: Serpent's Tail, 2011. ———. Black Bazaar, translated by Sarah Ardizzone. London: Serpent's Tail, 2012. ———. Tomorrow I Will Be Twenty, translated by Helen Stevenson. London: Serpent's Tail, 2013.

212

Appendix 1

———. Blue White Red, translated by Alison Dundy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2013. ———. Lumières de Pointe-Noire. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2013. ———. The Lights of Pointe Noire, translated by Helen Stevenson. London: Serpent's Tail, 2015. ———. Petit Piment. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2015 ———. Black Moses, translated by Helen Stevenson. London: Serpent's Tail/New York: The New Press, 2017. Maran, René. Batouala, véritable roman nègre. Paris: Albin Michel, 1921. ———. Batouala, translated by Adele Szold Seltzer. New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1922. ———. Batouala, translator unknown. London: Jonathan Cape, 1922. ———. Batouala, véritable roman nègre (version définitive). Paris: Albin Michel, 1938. ———. Batouala. A true black novel, translated by Barbara Beck and Alexandre Mboukou. Washington: Black Orpheus Press, 1972. Miano, Léonora. L'Intérieur de la nuit. Paris: Plon, 2005. ———. Dark Heart of the Night, translated by Tamsin Black. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 2011. Miské, Karim. Arab Jazz. Paris: Viviane Hamy, 2012. ———. Arab Jazz, translated by Sam Gordon. London: MacLehose Press, 2016. Monénembo, Tierno. Les Crapauds-brousse. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1979. ———. The Bush Toads, translated by James Kirkup. Harlow, Essex, UK: Longman, 1983. ———. L'Ainé des orphelins. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2000 ———. The Oldest Orphan, translated by Monique F. Nagem. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 2004. ———. Le Roi de Kahel. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2008. ———. The King of Kahel, translated by Nicholas Elliott. New York: Amazon Crossing, 2010. Mudimbe, V.Y. Entre les Eaux. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1973. ———. Le bel immonde. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1976. ———. L'Ecart. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1979. ———. Before the Birth of the Moon, translated by Marjolijn de Jager. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989. ———. Between Tides, translated by Stephen Becker. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991. ———. The Rift, translated by Marjolijn de Jager. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P, 1993 Mukasonga, Scholastique. Inyenzi ou les Cafards. Paris: Gallimard, 2006. ———. Notre Dame du Nil. Paris: Gallimard, 2012. ———. Cockroaches, translated by Jordan Stump. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2016. ———. Our Lady of the Nile, translated by Melanie Mauthner. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2014.

Appendix 1

213

Mwanza Mujila, Fiston. Tram 83. Paris: Anne-Marie Métaillé, 2014. ———. Tram 83, translated by Roland Glasser. Dallas, TX: Deep Velum, 2015. N'sondé, Wilfried. Le Coeur des enfants léopards. Arles: Actes Sud, 2007. ———. The Heart of the Leopard Children, translated by Karen Lindo. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2016. ———. Le Silence des esprits. Arles: Actes Sud, 2010. ———. Silence of the Spirits, translated by Karen Lindo. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2017. Nganang, Patrice. Temps de chien. Paris: Le Serpent à Plumes, 2001. ———. Dog Days: An Animal Chronicle, translated by Amy B. Reid. Charlottesville, VA: U of Virginia P, 2006. ———. Mont Plaisant. Paris: Philippe Rey, 2011. ———. Mount Pleasant, translated by Amy B. Reid. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016. Njami, Simon. Cerceuil et Cie. Paris: Lieu Commun, 1985. ———. Coffin & Co, translated by Marlene Raderman. Berkeley, CA: Black Lizard, 1987 Ouologuem, Yambo. Le Devoir de violence. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1968. ———. Bound to Violence, translated by Ralph Mannheim. Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 1971/ London: Secker and Warburg, 1971/ New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Book, 1971. Oyono, Ferdinand. Une Vie de boy. Paris: Julliard, 1956. ———. Le Vieux Nègre et la médaille. Paris: Julliard, 1956. ———. Chemin d'Europe. Paris: Julliard, 1960. ———. Houseboy, translated by John Reed. London: Heinemann Educational, 1966. ———. The Old Man and the Medal, translated by John Reed. London: Heinemann Educational, 1969. ———. Road to Europe, translated by Richard Bjornson. Washington: Three Continents Press, 1989. Rawiri Ntywetondo, Angèle. Fureurs et cris de femmes. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1989. ———. The Fury and Cries of Women, translated by Sara Hanaburgh. Charlottesville, VA: U of Virginia P, 2014. Rugero, Roland. Baho. La Roque d'Anthéron: Vents d'ailleurs, 2012. ———. Baho! translated by Christopher Schaefer. Delhi: Phoneme Books, 2016. Sadji, Abdoulaye. Maïmouna. Dakar: Imprimerie Abdoulaye Diop, 1952. ———. Maïmouna, translated by Alec Bessey. London: Sydenham Books, 1972. Sassine, Williams. Wirriyamu. Paris: Présence Aricaine, 1976. ———. Wirriyamu, translated by John Reed and Clive Wake. London: Heinemann Educational, 1980. Sembène, Ousmane. Le Docker noir. Paris: Nouvelles Editions Debresse, 1956. ———. Les Bouts de bois de Dieu. Paris: Le Livre Contemporain, 1960. ———. God's Bits of Wood, translated by Francis Price. New York: Doubleday, 1960. ———. Vehi-Ciosane ou Blanche Genèse, suivi du Mandat. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1966.

214

Appendix 1

———. The Money Order with White Genesis, translated by Clive Wake. Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 1972. ———. Xala. Paris: Présence Africaine,1973. ———. Xala, translated by Clive Wake. Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 1976. ———. Le Dernier de l'empire. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1981. ———. The Last of the Empire: A Senegalese Novel, translated by Adrian Adams. London: Heinemann Educational, 1983. ———. Black Docker, translated by Ros Schwartz. Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 1987. Sow Fall, Aminata. La Grève des Bàttu ou les déchets humains. Dakar: Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1979. ———. The Beggars' Strike or The Dregs of Society, translated by Dorothy Blair. Harlow, Essex, UK: Longman, 1981. Tadjo, Véronique. A vol d'oiseau. Paris: Nathan, 1986. ———. Le Royaume aveugle. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1990. ———. L'Ombre d'Imana. Arles: Actes Sud, 2000. ———. As the Crow Flies, translated by Wangui wa Goro. Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 2001. ———. The Shadow of Imana, translated by Véronique Wakerley. Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 2002. ———. Reine Pokou: Concerto pour un sacrifice. Arles: Actes Sud, 2004. ———. The Blind Kingdom, translated by Janis Alene Mayes. Oxford: Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2008. ———. Queen Pokou: Concerto for a Sacrifice, translated by Amy B. Reid. Oxford: Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2009. ———. Loin de mon père. Arles: Actes Sud, 2010. ———. Far from my Father, translated by Amy B. Reid. Charlottesville, VA: U of Virginia P, 2014. Tansi, Sony Lab'ou. Une Vie et demie. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1979. ———. L'Etat honteux. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1981. ———. L'Anté-peuple. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1983. ———. Les Sept Solitudes de Lorsa Lopez. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1985. ———. The Antipeople, translated by J.A. Underwood. London/New York: Marion Boyars Publishers, 1988. ———. The Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez, translated by Clive Wake. Oxford: Heinemann Educational, 1995. ———. Life and a Half, translated by Alison Dundy. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2011. ———. The Shameful State, translated by Dominic Thomas. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2016. U Tam'Si, Tchicaya. Les Méduses et les orties de la mer. Paris: Albin Michel, 1982. ———. The Madman and the Medusa, translated by Sonja Haussmann Smith and William Jay Smith. Charlottesville, VA: U of Virginia P, 1989. Waberi, Abdourahman. Transit. Paris: Gallimard, 2003. ———. Moisson de crânes. Paris: Le Serpent à Plumes, 2004.

Appendix 1

215

———. Aux Etats-Unis d'Afrique. Paris: J-C Lattès, 2006. ———. In the United States of Africa, translated by David Ball and Nicole Ball. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 2009. ———. Passage des larmes. Paris: J-C Lattès, 2009. ———. Passage of Tears, translated by David Ball and Nicole Ball. London/New York: Seagull Books, 2011. ———. Transit, translated by David Ball and Nicole Ball. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2012. ———. Harvest of Skulls, translated by Dominic Thomas. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2016. Warner-Vieyra, Myriam. Juletane. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1982. ———. Juletane, translated by Betty Wilson. London: Heinemann Educational, 1986. Zongo, Norbert. Le Parachutage. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1988. ———. The Parachute Drop, translated by Christopher Wise. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004.

Appendix 2

Categorization of Mainstream Publishers in France

In view of the complex and sheer inexhaustible chain of mergers and acquisitions that have occurred in the French publishing world, particularly since the 1980s, it has become almost an impossible task to obtain relevant numbers concerning profits or turnover of formerly independent presses, now socalled imprints of larger publishers, “editorial groups” (Rouet 31) or larger corporations (“maisons mères”) whose domains of activities have sometimes branched out into telecommunication, television, and so on (such as the multinational media conglomerate Lagardère or Média-Participations). François Rouet’s description of the editorial landscape provides nevertheless a useful point of departure for the categorization of French publishers of our corpus narratives. A second parameter for the evaluation of the importance of publishing houses over time (between 1921 and 2017) constitutes the number of publications per publisher (imprint name) as mentioned in WorldCat. Whereas these numbers are merely a rough indication due to the many duplications and errors (entries are done manually by librarians) they provide information on the relative position of the publisher as agent within the field of cultural production. In order to refine these results and obtain an additional indication for the number of books published per press, the ISBN publisher code instead of the publisher name was used in WorldCat. The publisher ISBN code can be found within the 13-digit International Standard Book Number that uniquely identifies books and book-like products published internationally: 000[EAN—implemented by the International Article Numbering Association in Europe]-0(0)[group-linguistic area]-0000 [publisher]-000[title]-0[check digit].The following search in WorldCat was performed per publisher: ISBN publisher code * (= wild card) except for last 4 digits + (year) 1921 - 2017

217

218

Appendix 2

+ (language) French + Books + any audience + any content + (format) not microform. It must be noted, however, that the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) was approved as an ISO standard only in 1970 (see website ISBN​.o​ rg) and will, therefore, not identify titles published before that date, unless new editions of these books have been published after 1970, and have thus been allocated an ISBN. Likewise, publishers that no longer existed after 1970 will not appear in WorldCat under an ISBN publisher code. Therefore, both parameters above—search via publisher name as well as ISBN publisher number—need to be applied to provide information about publishers established at the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth that published mainly before 1970. A cutoff at 25,000 titles for either WorldCat parameter resulted in a clear boundary to determine inclusion in either publisher category. A final check, especially of most recently created presses, can be performed by comparing the results obtained above with the information in the 2018 Directory of French Publishers provided by the Bureau International de l’Edition Française (https​:/​/ww​​w​.bie​​f​.org​​/fich​​iers/​​opera​​tion/​​4079/​​media​​ /9755​​/Bief​​%20an​​nuair​​e​%202​​018​%2​​​0simp​​le​_DE​​F​.pdf​, accessed January 27, 2020). It includes an up-to-date list of French publishing companies, their number of catalogue titles and average titles they publish per year, as well as the year they were founded. List of midsize and small publishers in France (of publishers that issued corpus narratives over time) Midsize mainstream publishers in France: Gallimard Le Seuil Albin Michel Plon Nathan Grasset Stock Julliard Robert Laffont Actes Sud Hatier

Appendix 2

Small mainstream publishers in France: Seghers Nouvelles Editions Debresse/Debresse Le Serpent à Plumes Union Générale d’Editions Buchet Chastel/Corrêa Mazarine Phébus Anne Carrière Anne-Marie Métailié Lieu Commun J-C Lattès Philippe Rey Viviane Hamy

219

Appendix 3

Specialized Publishers of French Corpus Narratives

FRANCE Présence Africaine Les Editions L’Harmattan Les Editions des Peuples Noirs Les Editions Maisonneuve et Larose Les Editions Publisud Vents d’ailleurs WEST AFRICA Les Editions CLE—Yaoundé, Cameroon Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines (du Sénégal)—Dakar, Senegal (Ivory Coast, Togo) Les Nouvelles Editions Ivoiriennes—Abidjan, Ivory Coast Centre d’Edition et de Diffusion Africaines (CEDA)—Abidjan, Ivory Coast Imprimerie Abdoulaye Diop—Dakar, Senegal CANADA Editions du Boréal—Montreal

221

Appendix 4

Table A—French to English Translation Awards

Country

Award

Awarding Foundation/Public Entity

Year Eligible Launched Translation

1965 The Society United Scott of Authors, Kingdom Moncrieff sponsored by Prize for Institut français French and Arts Council Translation England 1986 French-American United (FACE) Foundation States Translation with the Prize support of the Florence Gould Foundation

United States

French Voices Award

Cultural Services of the French Embassy and PEN American Center with support of the French American Cultural Exchange (FACE), the Florence Gould Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

2006

Total Monetary Prize Recipient

Full-length French £1,000 work of literary merit and general interest

Translator

Full-length work $10,000 of fiction or nonfiction (no poetry or children’s literature), first translation in previous year $6,000 Contemporary French writing in any field (fiction, nonfiction, children's literature, comics and ebooks) published in France within the last six years and not previously translated; recognizes both the original work and the quality of the translation

Translator

$4,000 for publisher, $2,000 for translator; for comic and picture books: $5,000 and $1,000 respectively

(Continued)

223

224

Appendix 4 Awarding Foundation/Public Entity

Year Eligible Launched Translation

Total Monetary Prize Recipient

2013

$10,000

Country

Award

United States

Grand Prize Winner of French Voices Award

Cultural Services of the French Embassy and PEN American Center with support of the French American Cultural Exchange (FACE), the Florence Gould Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

United States

Albertine Prize

Van Cleef & Arpels 2017 and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy (at Albertine— French bookshop in New York)

The best among the French Voices awardees (see French Voices Award)

A reader’s choice $10,000 award for best contemporary French fiction in English translation

Publisher: $6,000 to cover the preface and the publishing costs and a $4,000 nonnegotiable bonus to be allocated to the translator; respectively $7,000 and $3,000 in case of a comic book or picture book. The French author of the translated book will also be awarded the opportunity to do a book tour in the United States. 50 % author and 50 % translator

Appendix 5

Table B—Any-Language-to-English Translation Awards/Grants and Foreign Fiction Awards1

Country

Award

Awarding Foundation/ Public Entity

Year Launched/ Period

Eligible Translation

Total Monetary Prize

Recipient

United States

PEN PEN American 1963 (“first Translation of book- $3,000 Author Translation Center (jury American length works of Prize of prominent award to fiction, creative (until 2008 translators, recognize nonfiction, known as writers, and the art of poetry, or drama PEN-Clubeditors) the literary that have not of-thetranslator”) previously Month Club appeared in Translation English or have Prize) appeared only in an “egregiously flawed” translation. Fund seeks to encourage translators to undertake projects “they might not otherwise have had the means to attempt” Independent United The 1990–1994; Work of fiction £10,000 + 50% author; Kingdom Foreign Independent, 2001– or short story 1.5 l of 50 % Fiction Arts Council 2015 published by champagne translator Award England, contemporary (in 2016 Champagne author in merged Taittinger previous year; with the for best book in International English (not for Man Booker most accurate Prize) or inspiring translation)

(Continued)

225

226

Appendix 5

Country

Award

Ireland

International (IMPAC) Dublin Literary Award

United States

National Translation Award

United States

PEN /Heim Translation Fund (PEN America)

United English PEN’s Kingdom World Bookshelf: PEN Promotes

Awarding Foundation/ Public Entity

Year Launched/ Period

Sponsored by 1996 City Council of Dublin (until 2013 also by American Productivity Company IMPAC); novels are nominated by public libraries “world-wide” American 1998 Literary Translators Association (ALTA)

Priscilla and Michael Henry Heim Fund; since 2009 also Amazon

2003

English PEN Writers in Translation; funded by Bloomberg

2005–2016

Eligible Translation

Total Monetary Prize

Recipient

Awarded for €100, 000 excellent novels in world literature, Englishlanguage or translated

Author; in case of translation: €75,000 for author and €25,000 for translator

Book-length $5,000 (since works (novel, 2010) poetry, drama, or nonfiction) published in the preceding calendar year; usually previously untranslated contemporary works or firsttime translations of older works, but also important retranslations Book-length $2,000– works of $4,000 fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, or drama that have not previously appeared in English in print or have appeared only in an outdated or otherwise flawed translation Aim of the award: Promotional celebrate books grant of outstanding literary value, dedication to free speech and intercultural understanding which have a clear link to the PEN Charter

Translator

Translator

Publisher

(Continued)

227

Appendix 5 Awarding Foundation/ Public Entity

Country

Award

United States

The Best Three Percent Translated Website Book Award

United English PEN’s Kingdom World Bookshelf: PEN Translates

Year Launched/ Period 2008

English PEN Writers in Translation; funded by Arts Council England

2012

United International Booker Prize Kingdom Man Booker Foundation Prize (merger with Independent Foreign Fiction Award)

2016

1

Eligible Translation

Total Monetary Prize

The best original $5,000 (since works of 2011) international fiction and poetry published in the United States during the previous year Works of fiction, Up to 75 % non-fiction, (100 % poetry, prose or for small plays. publishers) Main criteria for of assessment: translation literary quality, projects) strength and innovation of the publishing project, and contribution to literary diversity in the UK (link to PEN Charter not necessary) A work of fiction, £ 50,000 novel or collection of short stories, translated into English and published in the UK

Recipient 50% author and 50% translator

Publisher

£ 25,000 for author and £ 25,000 for translator

This table presents a selection of the most important translation awards and grants that explicitly mention the translation/translator and/or the publisher of the translation, mostly as recipients.

Appendix 6

Table C—Literary Translation Prizes/Awards: Gender and Minority Representation in Corpus Narratives

Country

Award

Female Overall Female Representation Year Representation since 2000 Launched/ (and Female (and Female Period Translators) Translators)

PEN Translation 1963 Prize (until 2008 known as PENClub-of-theMonth Club Translation Prize) (including runners-up) Scott Moncrieff 1965 United Prize for Kingdom French (F–E)2 Translation (including commended and runners-up) United Translation Prize 1986 States (French(F–E) American Foundation) (includes all winners for fiction and nonfiction) United Independent 1990– Kingdom Foreign Fiction 1994 (A–E) Award (in and   2016 merger 2001– with the 2015 International Man Booker Prize)

United States (A–E)1  

Minority Background (% of Total FrenchLanguage Recipients)

Corpus Narratives Represented (Including Shortlists and Longlists)

14% (31%)

17% (43%) (2 out of 6 -33%Frenchlanguage texts)  

36 % (4 out of — 11 Frenchlanguage texts) (50 %—3 out 6 Frenchlanguage texts, since 2000) 

20% (47%)

53 % (57%)

10 % (27 % — since 2000)

11% (51%)

11% (54%)

11% (11% — since 2000)

10% (50%); 13% (53%); including including shortlists: shortlists 21% (50 %) 13% (53%)

0 out of 2 2010: (shortlist) winners; Broken Glass by including Mabanckou; shortlists: 2013: (longlist) 33% (4 out Black Bazaar by of total of Mabanckou 12 Frenchlanguage) (Continued)

229

230

Appendix 6

Female Overall Female Representation Year Representation since 2000 Launched/ (and Female (and Female Period Translators) Translators)

Country

Award

Ireland (A–E)

International (IMPAC) Dublin Literary Award

1996

9% (28 % of shortlisted)

5% (30 % of shortlisted)

United States (A–E) 

National Translation Award (ALTA)3 PEN/Heim Translation Fund

1998

20 % (41%)

22% (40%)

2004

 

32% (52%)

United English PEN’s Kingdom World (A–E) Bookshelf: PEN Promotes

2005

 

24 % (54%) (includes PEN Translates)

United States (F–E)  

French Voices Award

2006

 

35% (55%)

United States (A–E)

The Best Translated Book Award (fiction shortlists)

2007

 

40 (50%)

United English PEN’s Kingdom World: PEN Translates (A–E)  

2012

 

24 % (54%) (includes PEN Promotes)

Grand Prize 2013 Winner of French Voices Award

 

25% (100%)

United States (A–E)

United States

Any-language-to-English translations. French to English translations. 3 Data for shortlists in 1990, 1991, and 1995 not included. 1 2

Minority Background (% of Total FrenchLanguage Recipients)

Corpus Narratives Represented (Including Shortlists and Longlists)

50 % (2 French 2013: (longlist) laureates; Dirty Feet by but 7 out of Awumey 11—64%— Frenchlanguage shortlisted texts were authored by minority writers.) 0 out of 3 — Frenchlanguage recipients 56 % (9 out of — 16 Frenchlanguage recipients) 56% (of all 2006: Allah is Not FrenchObliged by language Kourouma recipients; includes PEN Translates) 13% 2006: The United States of Africa by Waberi; 2009: The Past Ahead by Gatoré; 2010: Dark Heart of the Night by Miano; 2014: Tram 83 by Mwanza Mujila 2015: The Lights of Pointe-Noire by Mabanckou 26% (of 2013: (shortlist) FrenchTransit by language Waberi; 2014: recipients (longlist) Our on shortlists Lady of the Nile only) by Mukasonga 56% (of all 2015: Tram 83 by FrenchMwanza Mujila language 2015: The Lights of recipients, Pointe-Noire by includes Mabanckou   PEN Promotes) 75% 2014: Our Lady of the Nile by Mukasonga

Bibliography

Abrams, Dennis “New UK Translation Stats from Literature Across Frontiers.” Publishing Perspectives. 22 Apr. 2015. https​:/​/pu​​blish​​ingpe​​rspec​​tives​​.com/​​2015/​​ 04​/ne​​w​-uk-​​trans​​latio​​n​-sta​​ts​-fr​​om​-li​​terat​​ure​-​a​​cross​​-fron​​tiers​/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2020. ———. “Women in Translation Month: Three Percent’s Chad Post Runs the Numbers.” Publishing Perspectives, 9 Aug. 2017. https​:/​/pu​​blish​​ingpe​​rspec​​tives​​ .com/​​2017/​​08​/th​​ree​-p​​ercen​​t​-cha​​d​-pos​​t​-wom​​en​-in​​-t​ran​​slati​​on​-mo​​nth/. Publishing Perspectives. Accessed 30 Mar. 2020. Achebe, Chinua. Home and Exile. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Adesokan, Akin. “New African Writing and the Question of Audience.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 43 no. 3, 2012, pp. 1–20. Ali, Souad T. “Feminism in Islam. A Critique of Polygamy in Mariama Bâ’s Epistolary Novel So Long a Letter.” Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World, vol. 10, 2012, pp. 179–99. Allen, Esther, editor. To Be Translated or Not to Be. PEN/IRL report on the international situation of literary translation. Barcelona: Institut Ramon Lull, 2007. Allen, Susan. René Maran’s ‘Batouala,’Jazz-text. Bern, Switz.: Peter Lang, 2015. d’Almeida, Irène Assiba. “Femme? Féministe? Misovire? Les romancières africaines face au féminisme." Notre Librairie, no. 117, Apr.–June 1994, pp. 48–51. ———. Francophone African Women Writers: Destroying the Emptiness of Silence. Gainesville FL: UP of Florida, 1994. ———. “The Concept of Choice in Mariama Bâ’s Fiction.” Boyce Davies and Adams Graves, pp. 161–71. Anderson, Perry and Pierre Nora. La Pensée tiède : Un regard critique sur la culture française, suivi de La Pensée réchauffée, réponse de Pierre Nora. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2005. Anderson, Porter. “Five Women Authors, Six Women Translators on Man Booker International Shortlist.” Publishing Perspectives, 9 Apr. 2019. https​:/​/pu​​blish​​ingpe​​

231

232

Bibliography

rspec​​tives​​.com/​​2019/​​04​/fi​​ve​-wo​​men​-a​​uthor​​s​-six​​-wome​​n​-tra​​nslat​​ors​-o​​n​-man​​-book​​ er​-20​​19​-in​​terna​​tiona​​ls​​-sh​​ortli​​st/#​.XLXVWuUCjM4​.email. Accessed 19 Feb. 2020. ———. “Industry Notes: ‘La Rentrée Littéraire’ For All in France; English PEN’s Translation Awards.” Publishing Perspectives, 10 Nov. 2017. https​:/​/pu​​blish​​ingpe​​ rspec​​tives​​.com/​​2017/​​11​/fr​​ance-​​la​-re​​ntree​​-pour​​-tous​​-engl​​ish​-p​​en​-tr​​​ansla​​tion-​​award​​ s/. Accessed 19 Feb. 2020. ———. “National Book Awards Honor Isabe Allende: ‘I’ve Found a Place.” Publishing Perspectives, 14 Nov. 2018. https​:/​/pu​​blish​​ingpe​​rspec​​tives​​.com/​​2018/​​ 11​/na​​tiona​​l​-boo​​k​-awa​​rds​-2​​018​-c​​eremo​​ny​-us​​-nati​​ona​l-​​book-​​found​​ation​/. Accessed 3 Mar. 2020. ———. “Nielsen Reports Translated Literature in the UK Grew 5.5 Percent in 2018.” Publishing Perspectives, 6 Mar. 2019.​https​:/​/pu​​blish​​ingpe​​rspec​​tives​​.com/​​2019/​​ 03​/ni​​elsen​​-repo​​rts​-t​​ransl​​ated-​​liter​​ature​​-in​-u​​k​-gro​​ws​-5-​​perce​​nt​-in​​-2018​​​-book​​er/#​ .XIkEeDGUO​_o​.email. Accessed 5 Feb. 2020. ———. “The US National Book Awards Go International With a Translation Prize.” Publishing Perspectives, 31 Jan. 2018. https​:/​/pu​​blish​​ingpe​​rspec​​tives​​ .com/​​2018/​​01​/us​​-nati​​onal-​​book-​​award​​-adds​​-tran​​s​lati​​on​-pr​​ize/. Accessed 3 Mar. 2020. Andrade, Susan. The Nation Writ Small. African Fictions and Feminisms, 1958-88. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2011. Angoulvant, Gabriel. Preface. Koffi, roman vrai d’un noir. By Gaston-Joseph. Paris: Editions du Monde Nouveau, 1923, pp. 7–15. Appiah, Kwame Anthony. In my Father’s House. Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992. Apter, Emily. “On Translation in a Global Market.” Public Culture, vol. 13, no. 1, 2001, pp. 1–12. Archan, Dagmar. “Übersetzungspreise und Übersetzungsstipendien. Fluch oder Segen für ÜbersetzerInnen und ihre Arbeit?” Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der Deutschen Literatur, vol. 29, no. 2, 2004, pp. 72–84. Armel, Aliette. “Je suis toujours un opposant.” Interview avec Ahmadou Kourouma. Le Magazine littéraire, no. 390, Sept. 2000, pp. 99–102. Arndt, Susan. “‘Who is afraid of feminism?’ Critical Perspectives on Feminism in African and African feminism.” Palabres, Revue d’Etudes Africaines, vol. III, no. 1, 2000, pp. 35–61. Asholt, Wolfgang and Marc Dambre. Preface. Un retour des normes romanesques dans la littérature française contemporaine. Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2010, pp. 11–17. Astier, Pierre and Laure Pécher. “French Book Publishers Risk Being Lost in Translation without Global Reach.” The Guardian, 13 May 2014. https​:/​/ww​​w​.the​​ guard​​ian​.c​​om​/bo​​oks​/2​​014​/m​​ay​/13​​/fren​​ch​-la​​nguag​​e​-int​​ernat​​iona​l​​-book​​-publ​​ishin​​g. Accessed 25 Mar. 2020. Azodo, Ada Uzoamaka. African Feminisms in the Global Arena. Novel Perspectives on Gender, Class, Ethnicity, and Race. Milwaukee, WI: Goldline and Jacobs, 2019.

Bibliography

233

Azodo, Ada Uzoamaka and Jeanne-Sarah de Larquier, editors. Emerging Perspectives on Ken Bugul. From Alternative Choices to Oppositional Practices. Trenton, NJ: Africa World, 2003. Babana-Hampton, Safoi. “Reading ‘Beur’ Film Production Otherwise. The Poetics of the Human and the Transcultural.” Rethinking African Cultural Production, edited by Frieda Ekotto and Kenneth W. Harrow. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 2015, pp. 127–41. Bahar, Saba and Valérie Cossy. “Le canon en question: l’objet littéraire dans le sillage des mouvements féministes.” Nouvelles Questions Féministes vol. 22, no. 2 (Féminisme et Littérature), 2003, pp. 4–12. Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel.” The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays, translated by Michael Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981, pp. 84–258. Bancel, Nicolas and Pascal Blanchard. “Mémoire coloniale : Résistances à l’émergence d’un Récit.” Culture post-coloniale 1961-2006. Traces et mémoires coloniales en France, edited by Pascal Blanchard, Nicolas Bancel and Sandrine Lemaire. Paris : Editions Autrement, 2005, pp. 22–41. Bancel, Nicolas, Pascal Blanchard and Françoise Vergès. La République coloniale. Paris: Hachette Littératures, 2003. Bandia, Paul. “Translation and Cultural Trends in African Metropolitan Literature.” Intimate Enemies, edited by Kathryn Batchelor and Claire Bisdorff. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2013, pp. 235–51. ———. Translation as Reparation. Writing and Translation in Postcolonial Africa. Manchester: St. Jerome, 2008. Barnett, Clive. “Disseminating Africa: Burdens of Representation and the African Writers Series.” New Formations, vol. 57, Winter 2006, 74–94. Bassnett, Susan and André Lefevere. “Proust’s Grandmother and the Thousand and One Nights. The ‘Cultural Turn’ in Translation Studies.” Introduction. Translation, History and Culture, edited by Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere. London and New York: Pinter Publishers, 1990, pp. 1–13. Batchelor, Kathryn. Decolonizing Translation: Francophone African Novels in English Translation. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome, 2009. Batchelor, Kathryn and Claire Bisdorff. Intimate Enemies. Translation in Francophone Contexts, Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2013. “Batouala. Antwoord op de vragen van het Tweede Kamerlid Cramer.” Algemeen Handelsblad. Amsterdam, 1 Mar.1930. http://resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​=ddd​ :010660958​:mpeg21​:a0335. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020. “Batouala.” De Indische courant. Surabaya, 16 July 1929. http://resolver​ .kb​ .nl​ / resolve​?urn​=ddd​:010279022​:mpeg21​:a0121. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020. “Batouala geweigerd.” Het Vaderland : staat- en letterkundig nieuwsblad. 's-Gravenhage, 11 July 1929. http://resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​=ddd​:010012270​:mpeg21​ :a0118. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020. Bellos, David. Is That a Fish in your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything. New York: Faber & Faber, 2011.

234

Bibliography

Blair, Dorothy S. African Literature in French. A History of Creative Writing from West and Equatorial Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1976. ———. Senegalese Literature: A Critical History. Boston: G.K. Hall, Twayne’s World Authors Series, 1984. ———. “Translating Francophone Writing from West and North Africa.” French Studies in Southern Africa, vol. 23, 1994, pp. 121–34. “Boekenschouw.” Rotterdamsch nieuwsblad. Rotterdam, 18 Aug. 1928. http:// resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​=ddd​:010514375​:mpeg21​:a0194. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020. Bokiba, André-Patient. Le Paratexte dans la littérature africaine francophone : Léopold Sédar Senghor et Henri Lopes. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006. Borel, Henri. “Fransche koloniale literatuur.” Het Vaderland: staat- en letterkundig nieuwsblad. 's-Gravenhage, 25 May 1922. http://resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​=ddd​ :010007910​:mpeg21​:a0100. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020. ———. “Neger literatuur.” De kroniek; geïllustreerd maandblad voor Noord- en Zuidnederland, vol. 8–2, 1 Feb. 1922, pp. 35–36. http://resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​ =dts​:32303​:mpeg21. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020. Bourdieu, Pierre. Choses dites. 1987. Paris : Minuit, 1987. ———. “Les conditions sociales de la circulation internationale des idées.” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, vol. 145, 2002, pp. 3–8. ———. The Field of Cultural Production. Essays on Art and Literature, edited by Randal Johnson. New York: Columbia UP, 1993. ———. “La production de la croyance. Contribution à une économie des biens symboliques.” Actes de recherches en sciences sociales, vol. 3, Feb.1977, pp. 3–43. ———. The Rules of Art, translated by Susan Emanuel. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996. ———. “Une révolution conservatrice dans l’édition.” Actes de recherche en sciences sociales, vol. 126–127, Mar. 1999, pp. 3–28. Bourdieu, Pierre and Loïc Wacquant. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992. Bourget, Carine and Irène Assiba d’Almeida. “Entretien avec Ken Bugul.” French Review: Journal of the American Association of Teachers of French, vol. 77, no. 2, 2003, pp. 352–63. Boyce Davies, Carole and Anne Adams Graves, editors. Ngambika. Studies of Women in African Literature. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1986. Boyce Davies, Carole. “Feminist Consciousness and African Literary Criticism.” Boyce Davies and Adams Graves, pp. 1–23. Braud, Philippe. “Le traumatisme colonial.” La situation postcoloniale. Les postcolonial studies dans le débat français, edited by Marie-Claude Smouts. Paris : Presses de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 2007, pp. 405–13. Brezault, Eloïse. Afrique : Paroles d’écrivains. Montréal: Mémoire d’encrier, 2010. “Brieven uit Brussel,” Provinciale Overijsselsche en Zwolsche Courant, 13 Jan. 1922. http:​/​/res​​olver​​.kb​.n​​l​/res​​olve?​​urn​=M​​MHCO0​​1​:000082713​​:mpeg21​:a0027. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020. Brouillette, Sarah. Postcolonial Writers in the Global Literary Marketplace. Houndsmill, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Bugul, Ken. Cendres et braises. Paris: L’Harmattan, 1994.

Bibliography

235

Bugul, Ken. Riwan ou Le chemin de sable. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1999. Burton Dancy, E. “De Neger-cultus in Frankrijk.” Delftsche courant. Delft, 22 Feb.1930. http://resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​=MMKB08​:000074875​:mpeg21​:a0019. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020. Bush, Ruth. Publishing Africa in French. Literary Institutions and Decolonization (1945-1967). Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2016. ———. “Publishing Francophone African Literature in Translation. Towards a Relational Account of Postcolonial Book History.” Batchelor and Bisdorff, 49–68. Bush, Ruth and Claire Ducournau. “Francophone African Literary Prizes and the ‘Empire of the French Language.’” The Book in Africa. Critical Debates, edited by Caroline Davis and David Johnson. Houndsmill, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Millan, 2015, pp. 201–22. Buzelin, Hélène. “Agents of Translation.” Handbook of Translation Studies, vol. 2, edited by Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2010, pp. 6–12. ———. “Unexpected Allies: How Latour’s Network Theory Could Complement Bourdieusian Analyses in Translation Studies.” The Translator, vol. 11, no. 2, 2005, pp. 193–218. Cachin, Marie-Françoise and Sylvie Ducas. “The Goncourt and the Booker: A tale of two prizes.” Logos, vol. 14, no. 2, 2003, pp. 85–94. Cadioli, Alberto. “L’édition, la lecture, la communauté littéraire: une réflexion méthodologique.” Présence francophone, vol. 50, 1997, pp. 135–45. Calargé, Carla. “Un Centre dans les marges: l’Amérique à la rescousse de la francophonie.” Nouvelles Etudes Francophones, vol. 25, no. 2, 2010, pp. 1–15. Callil, Carmen. “Why I Quit the Man Booker International Panel,” The Guardian, 20 May 2011, http:​/​/www​​.theg​​uardi​​an​.co​​m​/boo​​ks​/20​​11​/ma​​y​/21/​​man​-b​​ooker​​-inte​​rnati​​ ona​l-​​carme​​n​-cal​​lil. Accessed 17 Feb. 2016. Cameron, Deborah. “Foreign Exchanges: The Politics of Translation.” Critical Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 1–2, 2003, pp. 215–19. Carré, Nathalie. “Afrique et prix littéraires. Quelle intégration à la chaîne du livre sur le continent?” Afrique contemporaine, vol. 1, 2012, pp. 122–23. Carroll, David. Chinua Achebe: Novelist, Poet, Critic. London: McMillan, 1990. Casanova, Pascale. The World Republic of Letters, translated by M.B. DeBevoise. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 2004. Cazenave, Odile. Afrique sur Seine. A New Generation of African Writers in Paris. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005. ———. Rebellious Women: The New Generation of Female African Novelists. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000. Centre National du Livre. Rapport d’activité 2018, https​:/​/en​​.cala​​meo​.c​​om​/bo​​oks​/0​​ 01828​​7152c​​1​aa31​​d35a8​. Accessed 16 Oct. 2019. Cévaër, Françoise. Ces écrivains d’Afrique noire. Ivry-sur-Seine: Nouvelles du Sud, Silex, 1998. Chakava, Henry. “A Decade of Book Publishing in Kenya:1977-1987: One Man’s Involvement.” The African Book Publishing Record, vol. 88, 1988, pp. 235–41.

236

Bibliography

Chaulet Achour, Christiane. Les Francophonies littéraires. Saint-Denis : Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2016. ———. “Tribune: Pour l’enseignement des écrivains francophones du Sud.” Diacritik. 20 Mar. 2018. https​:/​/di​​acrit​​ik​.co​​m​/201​​8​/03/​​20​/tr​​ibune​​-pour​​-lens​​eigne​​ ment-​​des​-e​​criva​​ins​-f​​ra​nco​​phone​​s​-du-​​sud/. Accessed 30 Oct. 2019. Chave, Anna C. Constantin Brancusi. Shifting the Bases of Art. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1993. Chitnis, Rajendra, Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen, Rhian Atkin, and Zoran Milutinović. Translating the Literature of Smaller European Nations: A Picture from the UK, 2014-2016. Report. Arts & Humanities Research Council. http:​ /​ /www​​ .bris​​tol​.a​​c​.uk/​​media​​-libr​​ary​/s​​ites/​​arts/​​resea​​rch​/t​​ransl​​ating​​-lits​​-of​-s​​mall-​​natio​​ns​/Tr​​ ansla​​ting%​​20Sma​​ller%​​20Eur​​op​ean​​%20Li​​terat​​ures%​​20Rep​​ort(3).pdf. Accessed 19 Feb. 2020. Clifford, James. The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1988. Cole, Peter. “Making Sense in Translation. Toward an Ethics of the Art.” In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What it Means, edited by Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky. New York: Columbia UP, 2013, pp. 3–16. Couti, Jacqueline. “Seduction and Power: The Battle of the Sexes in Riwan ou Le Chemin de sable by Ken Bugul, Comment cuisiner son mari à l’africaine by Calixthe Beyala, and Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba by Mongo Beti.” Azodo and de Larquier, pp. 163–82. Currey, James. Africa writes back. The African Writers Series and the Launch of African Literature. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 2008. Damasco, Marie-Charlotte. “La littérature traduite en France: état des lieux.” Livre du Monde. 3 Mar. 2016. https://mondedulivre​.hypotheses​.org​/4645. Accessed 17 Feb. 2020. Damrosch, David. What is World Literature? Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2003. Davis, Caroline. Creating Postcolonial Literature. African Writers and British Publishers. Houndsmill, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Dehon, Claire. Le Roman camerounais d’expression française. Birmingham, AL: Summa, 1989. “De Goncourt-prijs.” De Telegraaf. 17 Dec. 1921. http://resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​ =ddd​:110551862​:mpeg21​:a0123. Accessed 16 Mar. 2020. De Jager, Marjolijn. “Translation as Revelation.” FLS, vol. XXXVI “Translation in French and Francophone Literature and Film,” 2009, pp. 85–100. ———. “Translation – A Listening Art.” Batchelor and Bisdorff, pp. 109–16. “De neger spreekt.” Algemeen Handelsblad. Amsterdam, 20 May 1922. http:// resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​=ddd​:010655292​:mpeg21​:a0054. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020. “De Prix Goncourt en de politiek.” De Telegraaf. Amsterdam, 21 Feb. 1922. http:// resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​=ddd​:110551972​:mpeg21​:a0204. Accessed 16 Mar. 2020. Derbyshire, Katy. “Translated Fiction by Women Must Stop Being a Minority in a Minority.” The Guardian. 10 Mar. 2016. https​:/​/ww​​w​.the​​guard​​ian​.c​​om​/bo​​oks​/

Bibliography

237

b​​ooksb​​log​/2​​016​/m​​ar​/10​​/tran​​slate​​d​-fic​​tion-​​by​-wo​​men​-m​​ust​-s​​top​-b​​eing​-​​a​-min​​ority​​ -in​-a​​-mino​​rity. Accessed 3 June 2019. Devi, Ananda and Julie Waters. “Ananda Devi as Writer and Translator: In interview with Julia Waters.” Batchelor and Bisdorff, pp. 117–23. Diawara, Manthia. “La Francophonie et l’édition.” Black Renaissance, vol. 3, no. 2, 2001, pp. 145–57. Díaz Narbona, Immaculada. “Une lecture à rebrousse-temps de l’oeuvre de Ken Bugul: critique féministe, critique africaniste.” Etudes françaises, vol. 37, no. 2, 2001, pp. 115–31. Diop, Boubacar Boris. Africa Beyond the Mirror. Banbury, UK: Ayebia Clarke Publishing, 2014. Diouf, Mbaye. “Les territoires de l’écriture : dialogue avec Ken Bugul et Edem Awumey.” Etudes littéraires, vol. 461, 2015, pp. 119–33. Dorsinville, Roger. “Vies d’Afrique: Une collection vérité.” Notre Librairie, 81, 1985, pp. 147–50. Dozon, Jean-Pierre. “Une décolonization en trompe-l’œil.” Culture post-coloniale 1961-2006. Traces et mémoires coloniales en France, edited by Pascal Blanchard, Nicolas Bancel, Sandrine Lemaire. Paris : Editions Autrement, 2005, pp. 195–202. Ducas, Sylvie. “De la fabrique de l’auteur à la fable auctoriale. Postures et impostures de l’écrivain consacré.” La Fabrication de l’auteur, edited by Marie-Pier Luneau and Josée Vincent. Quebec : Editions Nota Bene, 2010, pp. 149–66. ———. La Littérature à quel(s) prix? Histoire des prix littéraires. Paris : La Découverte, 2013. ———. “La place marginale des écrivains francophones dans le palmarès des grands prix d’automne.” Revue française d’histoire d’Outremer, vol. 332, 2001, pp. 347–88. ———. “Le prix Femina. La consécration littéraire au féminin.” Recherches féministes, vol. 16, no. 1, 2003, pp. 43–95. Ducournau, Claire. Ecrire, lire, élire l’Afrique. Les mécanismes de réception et de consécration d’écrivains contemporains originaires de pays francophones d’Afrique subsaharienne. Diss. Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 2012. ———. “From One Place to Another: The Transnational Mobility of Contemporary Sub-Saharan African Writers.” Mabanckou and Thomas, pp. 49–61. ———. La Fabrique des classiques africains. Écrivains d’Afrique subsaharienne francophone (1960-2012). Paris : CNRS Editions, 2017. Edoro, Ainehi. “Why it Matters that Sarah L. Manyika is on the Goldsmiths Prize Shortlist.” Brittle Paper, 10 Oct. 2016. https​:/​/br​​ittle​​paper​​.com/​​2016/​​10​/ma​​tters​​ -sara​​h​-man​​yika-​​golds​​mith-​​prize​​​-shor​​tlist​/. Accessed 16 Oct. 2019. Edwards, Brent. The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2003. Edwards, Kerith. “Returning for the Surrogate Mother: Ken Bugul’s Riwan ou Le chemin de sable.” Azodo and de Larquier, pp. 205–22. “Een negerroman.” De Indische courant. Surabaya, 5 Oct.1922. http://resolver​.kb​.nl​/ resolve​?urn​=ddd​:010277012​:mpeg21​:a0115. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020.

238

Bibliography

Efoui, Kossi. “Le boom des écrivains africains.” Jeune Afrique L’intelligent, 22–28 July 2002, pp. 77–79. Egonu, Iheanachor. “Le Prix Goncourt de 1921 et la ‘querelle de Batouala’.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 11, no. 4, 1980, pp. 529–45. Emecheta, Buchi. “Feminism with a small ‘f’!” Criticism and Ideology, edited by Kirsten Holst Peterson. Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1988, pp. 173–77. English, James F. The Economy of Prestige. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2005. ———. “Winning the Culture Game: Prizes, Awards, and the Rules of Art.” New Literary History, vol. 33, no. 1, 2002, pp. 109–35. Fabre, Michel. “René Maran, The New Negro and Negritude.” Phylon, vol. 36, no. 3, 1975, pp. 340–51. Falilou Ndiaye, Amadou and Moussa Sagna. Le Baobab fou, Riwan ou le chemin de sable et De l'autre côté du regard. Les Autobiographies féministes de Ken Bugul. Nouvelles Editions Francophones, vol. 32, no. 1, 2017, pp. 57–69. Fayolle, Roger. “Batouala et l’accueil de la critique.” L’Afrique littéraire et artistique, vol. 50, 1978, pp. 23–29. Ferris, William H. “The Significance of René Maran.” The Negro World, 11 Mar. 1922 (page unknown). Flood, Alison. “What became of the year 2018 as the year of publishing women?” The Guardian. 22 Jan. 2018. https​:/​/ww​​w​.the​​guard​​ian​.c​​om​/bo​​oks​/2​​018​/j​​an​/22​​/ what​​-beca​​me​-of​​-2018​​-as​-t​​he​-ye​​ar​​-of​​-publ​​ishin​​g​-wom​​en. Accessed 19 Feb. 2020. Francis, Cécilia W. “Idiolectal Redesigning of the Postcolonial Self in Le Baobab Fou.” Azodo and de Larquier, pp. 27–52. Frioux-Salgas, Sarah. “Présence Africaine. Une tribune, un mouvement, un réseau.” Gradhiva, no. 10, 2009, pp. 4–21. Frisani, Marcella. “L’invisibilité de la contemporary fiction de langue française dans le marché britannique de la traduction.” Traduire la littérature et les sciences humaines. Conditions et obstacles, edited by Gisèle Sapiro. Paris : Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, 2012, pp. 109–36. Frow, John. Cultural Studies and Cultural Value. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. Galey, Mathieu. “Un grand Roman Africain.” Le Monde, 12 Oct. 1968, supplement I-II. Gallimore, Rangira Béa. “Le jeu de décentrement et la problématique de l’universalité dans Riwan ou Le chemin de sable.” Azodo and de Larquier, pp. 183–204. Garane, Jeanne. Afterword. The Abandoned Baobab: The Autobiography of a Senegalese Woman. By Ken Bugul. U of Virginia P, 2008, pp. 161–80. ———. “ ‘La Femme moderne, c’est moi: la femme traditionnelle, c’est aussi moi’”: Entretien avec Ken Bugul.” Women in French Studies, vol. 11, 2003, pp. 101–12. Gardiner, Juliet. “Recuperating the Author: Consuming Fictions of the 1990s.” Papers of the Bibliographical Society, vol. 94, no. 4, 2000, pp. 255–74. Gaston-Joseph. Koffi, roman vrai d’un noir. Paris: Editions du Monde Nouveau, 1923. ———. Koffi, The Romance of a Negro, translated by Elaine Wood. London: John Bale, Sons & Danielsson, 1923.

Bibliography

239

Gaudemar de, Antoine. “Autant en rapporte L’Harmattan.” Libération, 6 Mar. 1997. www​.next​.liberation​.frm. Accessed 21 Jan. 2019. Geist, Sidney. “Brancusi.” “Primitivism” in 20th Century Art: the Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern. Volume II, edited by William Rubin. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1984, pp. 345–67. Geneste, Elsa. “Autour de ‘Batouala’ de René Maran: réflexions sur quelques formulations racistes et antiracistes du mot ‘nègre.’” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos, 15 Nov. 2010. doi : 10.4000/nuevomundo.6030. Accessed 4 Oct. 2019. Genette, Gérard. Figures V. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2002. ———. Seuils. Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1987. ———. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, translated by Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Gentzler, Edwin. “Translation, Poststructuralism, and Power.” Translation and Power, edited Maria Tymoczko and Edwin Gentzler. Amherst and Boston: U of Massachusetts P, 2002, pp. 195–208. Gentzler, Edwin and Maria Tymoczko. Introduction. Translation and Power, edited by Maria Tymoczko and Edwin Gentzler. Amherst and Boston: U of Massachusetts P. 2002, pp. xi–xxvii. Goor, J. van. De Nederlandse Koloniën: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse expansie. 1600-1975. Den Haag: SDU Uitgeverij Koninginnegracht, 1993. Godian, Nicolas. “Batouala reassessed,” West Africa, 3 Sept. 1973, pp. 1230–31. “Gouvernementsbedrijven.” Algemeen Handelsblad. Amsterdam, 5 Mar. 1930. http://resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​=ddd​:010660860​:mpeg21​:a0255. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020. Greshoff, J. “Zwarte kunst.” Nederland 74-1, approx. 1 Jan. 1922. http://resolver​.kb​ .nl​/resolve​?urn​=dts​:942001​:mpeg21. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020. Grossman, Edith. Why Translation Matters. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2010. Guèye, Médoune. “La Question du féminisme chez Mariama Bâ et Aminata Sow Fall.” The French Review, vol. 72, no. 2, 1998, pp. 308–19. Guillory, John. “Bourdieu’s Refusal.” Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 58, no. 4, Dec. 1997, pp. 367–98. Habash, Gabe. “Just How Much Does a Pulitzer Prize Help a Book’s Sales?” Publishers Weekly, 19 Apr. 2012. https​:/​/ww​​w​.pub​​lishe​​rswee​​kly​.c​​om​/pw​​/by​ -t​​opic/​​indus​​try​-n​​ews​/a​​wards​​-and-​​prize​​s​/art​​icle/​​51573​​-just​​-how-​​much-​​does-​​a​-pul​​ itzer​​-priz​​​e​-hel​​p​-a​-b​​ook​-s​​-sale​​s​.htm​​l. Accessed 25 Feb. 2019. Hage, Julien. “Les littératures francophones d’Afrique noire à la conquête de l’édition française (1914-1974).” Gradhiva, vol. 10, 2009, pp. 81–105. Harrell-Bond, Barbara. “Mariama Bâ, Winner of the First Noma Award for Publishing in Africa: An Interview.” African Book Publishing Record, vol. 7, no. 3–4, 1980, pp. 209–14. Harrow, Kenneth. Introduction. So Long a Letter. Edinburgh: Pearson Education, 2008, pp. i–vi. ———. Thresholds of Change in African Literature: The Emergence of a Tradition. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994. Hatim, Basil. Teaching and Researching Translation. Harlow, UK: Longman, 2001.

240

Bibliography

Hausser, Michel. Les Deux Batouala de René Maran. Ottowa: Editions Naaman de Sherbrooke, 1975. Hawkins, Peter. “An Interview with Aminata Sow Fall.” African Affairs, vol. 87, no. 348, July 1988, pp. 419–30. ———. “Dorothy Blair, 1913-1998.” International Journal of Francophone Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 1999, pp. 5–8. Heilbron, Johan. “Towards a Sociology of Translation. Book Translations as a Cultural World-System.” European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 2, no. 4, 1999, pp. 429–44. Heinich, Nathalie. L’Epreuve de la grandeur. Prix littéraires et reconnaissance. Paris : La Découverte, 1999. Herdeck, Donald E. Introduction. Batouala: A True Black Novel. By René Maran. Translated by Barbara Beck and Alexandre Mboukou. Washington DC: Black Orpheus Press, 1972, pp. 1–6. Heyman, Stephen. “Who Is the Biggest Publisher of Foreign Literature in the U.S.?” The New York Times, 29 Apr. 2015. https​:/​/ww​​w​.nyt​​imes.​​com​/2​​015​/0​​4​/30/​​arts/​​ inter​​natio​​nal​/w​​ho​-is​​-the-​​bigge​​st​-pu​​blish​​er​-of​​-fore​​ign​-l​​itera​​tur​e-​​in​-th​​e​-us.​​html.​​ Accessed 16 Oct. 2019. Heymans Jz., S. “De Academie Goncourt en Femina.” Bataviaasch nieuwsblad. Batavia, 21 Jan. 1922. http://resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​=ddd​:011040027​:mpeg21​ :a0139. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020. Higginson, Pim. Introduction. Cruel City. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2013, pp. vii–x. Hitchcott, Nicki. “African ‘herstory’: The feminist reader and the African autobiographical voice.” Research in African Literature, vol. 28, no. 2, 1997, pp. 16–33. ———. “A Global African Commemoration - Rwanda: écrire par devoir de mémoire.” Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, 2009, pp. 151–61. ———. Women Writers in Francophone Africa. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Hudson-Weems, Clenora. Africana Womanism: Reclaiming Ourselves. Troy, MI: Bedford Publishing, 1995. Huggan, Graham. “Prizing ‘otherness’: A Short History of the Booker.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 29, no. 3, 1997, pp. 412–34. ———. The Postcolonial Exotic. London: Routledge, 2001. Ibironke, Olabode. Remapping African Literature. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. “Indische postcensuur. Handen af!” Het Volk, dagblad voor de arbeiderspartij. Amsterdam, 23 Apr. 1930. http://resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​=ddd​:011116055​ :mpeg21​:p009. Accessed 11 Mar. 2020. Jackson, Stevi and Jackie Jones, editors. “Thinking for Ourselves: An Introduction to Feminist Theory.” Contemporary Feminist Theories, 1998, pp. 1–11. Jacquemond, Richard. “Translation and Cultural Hegemony: The Case of ArabicFrench Translation.” Rethinking Translation: Discourse, Subjectivity, Ideology, edited by Lawrence Venuti. New York: Routledge, 1992, pp. 139–58. Jahn, Janheinz and Claus Peter Dressler. Bibliography of Creative African Writing. Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus-Thompson Organization, 1971.

Bibliography

241

Jauss, Hans Robert. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Translated by Timothy Bahti. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota Press, 1982. J.G. “Marjolijn de Jager, literary translator- linguist of the month of October 2014.” Le mot juste en anglais, blog http:​/​/www​​.le​-m​​ot​-ju​​ste​-e​​n​-ang​​lais.​​com​/2​​000​/0​​1​/mar​​ jolij​​n​-de-​​jager​​-lite​​rary-​​trans​​lator​​-ling​​tuist​​-of​-t​​hye​-m​​​onth-​​of​-oc​​tober​​-2014​​.html​. Accessed 30 Aug. 2017. Johnson, Hannah. “First PublisHer’s Dinner: Working to Support Women in Publishing.” 20 Mar. 2019. https​:/​/pu​​blish​​ingpe​​rspec​​tives​​.com/​​2019/​​03​/fi​​rst​-d​​ inner​​-lond​​on​-bo​​ok​-fa​​ir​-20​​19​-su​​pport​​ing​-p​​ublis​​hing-​​​women​/#​.XJOLfJI0Z8k​ .email. Accessed 19 Feb. 2020. Johnson, Randall. “Editor’s Introduction. Pierre Bourdieu on Art, Literature and Culture.” The Field of Cultural Production. Essays on Art and Literature. By Pierre Bourdieu. New York: Columbia UP, 1993, pp. 1–25. Jong, de, A.M. “Postale censuur in Ned.-Indië! Batouala van René Maran aan den uitgever teruggezonden.” Het volk: dagblad voor de arbeiderspartij. Amsterdam, 4 July 1929. http://resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​=ddd​:011115377​:mpeg21​:a0050. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020. ———. Voorwoord. Batouala. By René Maran. Translated by J. Feitsma. Amsterdam: Mulder & Co., 1928, pp. 5–11. Kadima-Nzuji, Mukala. “Les écrivains africains et l’édition: sauvegarde ou altération d’une identité.” Revue d’Ethnopsychologie, vol. XXXV, no. 2/3, 1980, pp. 13–18. Kaprèlian, Nelly. “Pourquoi les américains [sic] ne lisent pas les romans français?” Les Inrockuptibles, 14 Mar. 2009. www.lesinrocks.com. Accessed 10 Dec. 2020. Kemp, Simon. French Fiction into the Twenty-First Century: The Return of the Story. Cardiff: U of Wales P, 2010. Kesteloot, Lilyan. Les Ecrivains de langue française: Naissance d’une littérature. Bruxelles: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1963. ———. Introduction. Kaïdara, translated by Daniel Whitman. Washington: Three Continents Press, 1988, 37–45. Kibble, Matt. “The Digitisation of the African Writers Series.” Africana Libraries Newsletter 120, May 2007. (Indiana University) http:​/​/www​​.indi​​ana​.e​​du/​~l​​ibsal​​c​/ afr​​ican/​​ALN​%2​​0120/​​aln12​​​0vend​​or​.ht​​ml. Accessed 22 Jan. 2020. King, Adele. Introduction. From Africa. New Francophone Stories. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 2004, pp. ix–xvii. ———. Rereading Camara Laye. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 2002. Kinzer, Stephen. “America Yawns at Foreign Fiction.” The New York Times, 26 July 2003, Supplement Ideas & Arts, pp. 1+9. Kom, Ambroise. Mongo Beti parle. Bayreuth: Eckhard Breitinger, 2002. Kujamäki, Pekka. “‘Of course Germans have a certain interest in Finland, but…’ Openness to Finnish literature in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.” Pym, Shlesinger and Jettmarová, pp. 41–52. Lahire, Bernard. La condition littéraire. La double vie des écrivains. Paris: La Découverte, 2006. Larquier, de, Jeanne-Sarah. “From Fanon’s Alienating Masks to Sartre’s retour en Afrique: From Le baobab fou to De l’autre côté du regard.” Azodo and de Larquier, pp. 123–38.

242

Bibliography

“Lectuurbespreking.” De Telegraaf. Amsterdam, 24 Apr. 1929. http://resolver​.kb​.nl​/ resolve​?urn​=ddd​:110566268​:mpeg21​:a0315. Accessed 11 Mar. 2020. Le Cardonell, Georges. “Le Prix Goncourt et ses romans.” La Revue universelle, 1 Jan. 1922, pp. 103–108. Lee Levin, Alexandra. “Thomas Seltzer: Publisher, Fighter for Freedom of the Press, and the Man who ‘Made’ D.H. Lawrence,” American Jewish Archives, Jan. 1989, pp. 215–24. http:​/​/ame​​rican​​jewis​​harch​​ives.​​org​/p​​ublic​​ation​​s​/jou​​rnal/​​PDF​/1​​989​_4​​1​ _​02_​​00​_le​​vin​.p​​df. Accessed 4 Oct. 2019. Lee, Sonia. Les Romancières du continent noir. Paris: Hatier, 1994. Lefevere, André. “Composing the Other.” Post-colonial Translation. Theory and Practice, edited by Susan Bassnett and Harish Triveda. London: Routledge, 1999, pp. 75–94. ———. Translating Literature. Practice and Theory in a Comparative Literature Context. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1992. Lepape, Pierre. “La dictature de la ‘world literature.’” Le Monde diplomatique, vol. 50, no. 600, Mar. 2004, pp. 24–25. “Letterkunde. Boekaankondigingen." Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant Rotterdam, 3 Dec. 1928. http://resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​=ddd​:010029999​:mpeg21​:a0237. Accessed 11 Mar. 2020. “Letterkundige kroniek.” De Indische courant. Surabaya, 11 Mar.1922. http:// resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​=ddd​:010276642​:mpeg21​:a0159. Accessed 11 Mar. 2020. Linn, Stella. “Trends in the Translation of a Minority Language. The Case of Dutch.” Pym, Shlesinger and Jettmarová, pp. 27–39. Lionnet, Françoise and Shu-mei Shih, editors. Minor Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2005. Loupias, Bernard. “Il souffle sur l’édition française [un] vent d’Afrique.” Le Nouvel Observateur, 15–21 June 2000, pp. 52–53. Low, Gail. Publishing the Postcolonial. Anglophone West African and Caribbean Writing in the UK 1948-1968. London: Routledge, 2011. Mabanckou, Alain. “La Francophonie, oui, le ghetto : non!” Le Monde, 19 Mar. 2006. http:​/​/www​​.cong​​opage​​.com/​​Les​-G​​rands​​-deba​​ts​-du​​-B​log​​-6​-La​. Accessed 24 June 2019. ———. “‘The Song of the Migrating Bird.’ For a World Literature in French,” translated by Dominique Thomas. Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, 2009, pp. 144–50. Mabanckou, Alain and Dominic Thomas, editors. Francophone Sub-Saharan African Literature in Global Contexts. Yale French Studies 120. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2011. Maloney, Jennifer. “A Book Translator Becomes a Star.” The Wall Street Journal, 22 Jan. 2016, pp. D1–D5. Mangeon, Anthony. “La Réception littéraire et politique de René Maran par l’Amérique Noire: influences ou malentendus?” Francofonia, vol. 14, 5 Mar. 2006. http:​/​/www​​.reda​​lyc​.o​​rg​/ht​​ml​/29​​5​/29​5​​01407​/. Accessed 24 Mar. 2016. Maran, René. Batouala, véritable roman nègre. Paris: Albin Michel, 1921.

Bibliography

243

———. Batouala, translated by Adele Szold Seltzer. New York: Thomas Seltzer, 1922. ———. Batuala, ein echter Negerroman, translated by Claire Goll. Basel: Rhein Verlag, 1922. ———. Batouala, translator unknown. London: Jonathan Cape, 1922. ———. Batouala, ruwe liefde, translated by J. Feitsma. Amsterdam: Mulder & Co., 1928. ———. Batouala, véritable roman nègre (definitive edition). Paris: Albin Michel, 1938. ———. Batouala, A True Black Novel, translated by Barbara Beck and Alexandre Mboukou, Washington, DC: Black Orpheus Press, 1972. ———. Batouala: ein authentischer “roman nègre,” translated by Caroline Vollmann. Zürich: Manesse-Verlag, 2007. Marie, Laurence. “Counter to Cliché French Translations Sell Better Than Ever.” Publishing Perspectives, 14 Jan. 2014. https​:/​/pu​​blish​​ingpe​​rspec​​tives​​.com/​​2014/​​ 01​/co​​unter​​-to​-c​​liche​​-fren​​ch​-tr​​ansla​​tions​​-sell​​-b​ett​​er​-th​​an​-ev​​er/. Accessed 19 Feb. 2020. Mazuet, Alix. “Tradition, Modernity, and the Third Term of Binary Oppositions in Ken Bugul’s Riwan ou le Chemin de sable.” Imaginary Spaces of Power in Sub-Saharan Literatures and Films, edited by Alix Mazuet, Lifongo Vetinde, and Alexie Tcheuyap. Cambridge : Cambridge Scholars, 2012, pp. 16–44. Mbaye d’Erneville, Annette. Femmes africaines. Romorantin: Editions Martinsart, 1981. Mbog, Raoul. “L’Harmattan, la maison d’édition qui ne paie pas ses auteurs.” Le Monde, 25 June 2015. https​:/​/ww​​w​.lem​​onde.​​fr​/af​​rique​​/arti​​cle​/2​​015​/0​​1​/30/​​l​-har​​ matta​​n​-la-​​maiso​​n​-d​-e​​ditio​​n​-qui​​-ne​-p​​aie​-p​​as​-le​​s​​-afr​​icain​​s​_456​​6732_​​3212.​​html. Accessed 30 Dec. 2019. McBride, Donna. “Profile: Three Continents Press.” Translation Review, vol. 41, no. 1, 1993, pp. 16–18. McDowell, Edwin. “Lawrence Hill, 75, Longtime Publisher and Book Salesman.” The New York Times, 15 Mar. 1988, 36. https://nyti​.ms​/2Ml4aSI. Accessed 16 Oct. 2019. Meizoz, Jérôme. “Avant-Propos.” Etudes de Lettres, vol. 273, 2006, pp. 5–8. Miano, Léonora. Habiter la frontière. Paris: L’Arche, 2012. Midiohouan, Guy Ossito. “Les premiers romanciers africains face à la critique colonialiste : les préfaciers et l’humanisme franco-africain.” Peuples Noirs Peuples Africains, vol. 24, 1981, pp. 103–17. Miller, Christopher. Blank Darkness. Africanist Discourse in French. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1985. ———. Theories of Africans. Francophone Literature and Anthropology in Africa. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990. Milliott, Jim. “Ranking America’s Largest Publishers.” Publishers Weekly, 24 Feb. 2017. https​:/​/ww​​w​.pub​​lishe​​rswee​​kly​.c​​om​/pw​​/by​-t​​opic/​​indus​​try​-n​​ews​/p​​ublis​​her​-n​​ ews​/a​​rticl​​e​/728​​89​-ra​​nking​​-amer​​ica​-​s​​-larg​​est​-p​​ublis​​hers.​​html. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020.

244

Bibliography

Milton, John and Paul Bandia. “Agents of Translation and Translation Studies.” Introduction. Agents of Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2009, pp. 1–18. Moi, Toril. “Appropriating Bourdieu. Feminist Theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology of Culture.” New Literary History, vol. 22, 1991, pp. 1017–49. ———. “‘I am not a woman writer.’ About Women, Literature and Feminist Theory Today.” Feminist Theory, vol. 9, no. 3, 2008, pp. 259–71. Moretti, Franco. Distant Reading. London and Brooklyn: Verso, 2013. ———. Graphs, Maps and Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History. London and Brooklyn: Verso, 2007. Morrison, Donald. “The Death of French Culture.” Time, 3 Dec. 2007, pp. 28–33. Mortimer, Mildred. “An Interview with Myriam Warner-Vieyra.” Callaloo, vol. 16, no. 1, Winter 1993, pp. 108–15. Moudileno, Lydie. “Fame, Celebrity and the Conditions of Visibility of the Postcolonial Author.” Mabanckou and Thomas, pp. 62–74. ———. Littératures africaines francophones des années 1980 et 1990. Dakar: Codesria, 2013. Mouralis, Bernard. “Pertinence de la notion de champ littéraire en littérature africaine.” Les Champs littéraires africains, edited by Romuald Fonkoua and Pierre Halen. Paris : Karthala, 2001, pp. 57–71. ———. Littérature et Développement : Essai sur le statut, la fonction et la représentation de la littérature négro-africaine d’expression française. Paris: Silex Editions, 1984. ———. “Pour qui écrivent les romanciers africains ? Essai de titrologie romanesque.” Présence Africaine, vol. 114, 1980, pp. 53–64. ———. République et Colonies. Entre histoire et mémoire: la République française et l’Afrique. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1999. Moussirou-Mouyama, Auguste. “L’Avenir du français en Afrique subsaharienne.” L’Avenir du Français, edited by Jacques Maurais, Pierre Dumont, Jean-Marie Klinkenberg, Bruno Maurer and Patrick Chardenet. Paris : EAC-AUF, 2008, pp. 179–82. Mudimbe, V.Y. The Invention of Africa. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1988. Multatuli. Max Havelaar or the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company. translated by Roy Edwards. London: Penguin Books, 1995. Naudier, Delphine. Introduction. “Genre et activité littéraire : les écrivaines francophones.” Sociétés contemporaines, vol. 78, 2010, pp. 5–13. Ngate, Jonathan. “A Continent and its Literatures in French.” African Anthology of Criticism and Theory, edited by Tejumola Olaniyan and Ato Quayson. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007, pp. 46–53. Niranjana, Tejaswini. Siting Translation. History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context. Berkeley: U of California P, 1992. Obi-Young, Otosirieze. “Is Fiston Mujila’s Tram 83 Misogynist Poverty Porn?” Brittle Paper 24 Apr. 2017. https​:/​/br​​ittle​​paper​​.com/​​2017/​​04​/fi​​ston-​​mujil​​as​-tr​​ am​-83​​-miso​​gynis​​t​-pov​​erty-​​porn-​​zukis​​wa​-wa​​nner-​​richa​​rd​-od​​uko​-l​​ead​-s​​trong​​-reac​​ tion-​​p​a​-ik​​hides​​-damn​​ing​-c​​ritic​​ism/. Accessed 16 Oct. 2019.

Bibliography

245

Ojo, Ada. “The Role of the Translator of African Written Literature in Intercultural Consciousness and Relationship.” Meta, vol. 31, no. 3, 1986, pp. 291–99. Onana, Charles. René Maran: Le premier Goncourt noir 1887-1960. Paris: Editions Duboiris, 2007. Ormerod, Beverly and Jean-Marie Volet. Romancières africaines d’expression française: le sud du Sahara. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1994. Owomoyela, Oyekan, editor. The Columbia Guide to West African Literature in English since 1945. New York: Columbia UP, 2008. Paloposki, Outi. “Limits of Freedom: Agency, Choice and Constraints in the Work of the Translator.” Agents of Translation, edited by John Milton and Paul Bandia. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2009, pp. 189–208. Parks, Tim. “The Nobel Individual.” The Times Literary Supplement. 20 Apr. 2011. https​:/​/ti​​mpark​​s​.com​​/the-​​nobel​​-indi​​​vidua​​l. Accessed 16 Oct. 2019. Permys, Martin. “De Goncourt prijs in 1921.” Den Gulden Winckel, 15 Feb. 1922 http:​/​/www​​.dbnl​​.org/​​tekst​/​_gul​​00119​​2201_​​01/​_g​​ul001​​19220​​1​_0​1_​​0011.​​php. Accessed 11 Mar. 2020. Pickford, Susan. “The Booker Prize and the Prix Goncourt: A Case Study of AwardWinning Novels in Translation.” Book History, vol. 14, 2011, pp. 221–40. Piault, Fabrice. “Classement 2018. Les 200 premiers éditeurs français.” Livres Hebdo. 22 June 2018, pp. 20–29. ———. “Littérature étrangère : la pente anglaise.” Livres Hebdo, vol. 646, 19 May 2006, pp. 3–6. ———. “De la ‘rationalisation’ à l’hyperconcentration.” L’Edition française depuis 1945, edited by Fabrice Piault, 1998, pp. 628–39. Pikkujämsä, Jarmo. “Europe Discarded. Ken Bugul and the Twenty-Eighth Wife of a Marabout.” Africa Writing Europe: Opposition, Juxtaposition, Entanglement, edited by Maria Olaussen and Christina Angelfors. Amsterdam Editions Rodopi, 2009, pp. 127–52. Pinhas, Luc. Editer dans l’espace francophone. Paris: Alliance des éditeurs indépendants, 2005. ———. “L'édition en Afrique francophone : un essor contrarié.” Afrique contemporaine, vol. 1, no. 241, 2012, pp. 120–21. DOI:10.3917/afco.241.0120. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019. “Pontas at the ‘Literary agents and copyright management in France’ conference.” Pontas, an International Literary & Film Agency. 16 Nov. 2015. https​:/​/ww​​w​.pon​​ tas​-a​​gency​​.com/​​ponta​​s​-at-​​liter​​ary​-a​​gents​​-and-​​copyr​​ight-​​manag​​ement​​-in​-f​​​rance​​ -conf​​erenc​​e/. Accessed 18 Nov. 2015. Porra, Véronique. L’Afrique dans les relations franco-allemandes. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommunikation, 1994. ———. Langue française, langue d’adoption. Une littérature ‘invitée’ entre creation, strategies et contraintes 1946-2000. Hildesheim, Zürich and New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2011. Post, Chad. “Translation Nation: A State of the Union.” Publishing Perspectives, 31 July 2009. https​:/​/pu​​blish​​ingpe​​rspec​​tives​​.com/​​2009/​​07​/tr​​ansla​​tion-​​natio​​n​-a​-s​​tate-​​​ of​-th​​e​-uni​​on/. Accessed 16 Oct. 2019.

246

Bibliography

Pouly, Marie-Pierre. “Playing Both Sides of the Field: The Anatomy of a ‘Quality Bestseller.’” Poetics, vol. 59, 2016, pp. 20–34. Pramoedya, Ananta Toer. “The Book that Killed Colonialism.” The New York Times Magazine. 18 Apr. 1999. https​:/​/ww​​w​.nyt​​imes.​​com​/1​​999​/0​​4​/18/​​magaz​​ine​/b​​est​-s​​ tory-​​the​-b​​ook​-t​​hat​-k​​illed​​-colo​​​niali​​sm​.ht​​mlPro​​Quest​. Accessed 1 Apr. 2020. Prasad, G.J.V. “The Strange Case of the Indian English novel.” Post-colonial Translation. Theory and Practice, edited by Susan Bassnett and Harish Triveda. London: Routledge, 1999, pp. 41–57. Pym, Anthony, Miriam Shlesinger and Zuzana Jettmarová, editors. Sociological Aspects of Translating and Interpreting. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2006. Reynolds, Matthew. “On Judging the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize.” Translation and Literature, vol. 17, no. 1, 2008, pp. 65–69. Rich, Motoko. “Translation Is Foreign to U.S. Publishers.” The New York Times. 18 Oct. 2008. http:​/​/www​​.nyti​​mes​.c​​om​/20​​08​/10​​/18​/b​​ooks/​​18boo​​k​.htm​​l​​?pag​​ewant​​ed​ =1. Accessed 28 Jan. 2019. Rickard Blair, Jen. “A New ‘Murmuration’ Among Translators: The Starling Bureau.” World Literature Today. 6 June 2017. https​:/​/ww​​w​.wor​​ldlit​​eratu​​retod​​ay​.or​​g​ /blo​​g​/tra​​nslat​​ion​-t​​uesda​​y​/new​​-murm​​urati​​on​-am​​ong​-t​​ransl​​​ators​​-star​​ling-​​burea​​u. Accessed 16 Oct. 2019. “Rondom de ‘Academie Goncourt.’” De Telegraaf. Amsterdam, 3 Mar. 1922. http:// resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​=ddd​:110552017​:mpeg21​:a0259. Accessed 11 Mar. 2020. Ross, Jane. EBRD Literature Prize 2019, 26 June 2018. https://www.ebrd.com/ news/2018/ebrd-literature-prize-2019.html. Accessed 3 Mar. 2020. Rossiter, Margaret W. “The Matilda Effect in Science.” Social Studies of Science, vol. 23, 1993, pp. 325–41. Rouet, François. Le Livre : mutations d’une industrie culturelle. Paris: La Documentation française, 2007. Rubiales, Lourdes. “Notes sur la réception du Goncourt 1921 en France.” Francofonia, vol. 14, 2005, pp. 123–45. Sabo, Oana. The Migrant Canon in the Twenty-first Century in France. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 2018. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Random House, 1994. ———. The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1983. Sapiro, Gisèle, editor. Les contradictions de la globalisation éditoriale. Paris: Nouveau Monde, 2009. ———. “Les échanges littéraires entre Paris et New York à l’ère de la globalisation.” Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique, Université Paris-PanthéonSorbonne/CNRS/EHESS, Apr. 2010. ———. “French Literature in the World System of Translation.” French Global. A New Approach to Literary History, edited by Christie McDonald and Susan Rubin Suleiman. New York: Columbia UP, 2010, pp. 298–319. ———. “Préambule.” Traduire la littérature et les sciences humaines. Paris: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, 2012, pp. 15–24. ———. “Les obstacles économiques et culturels à la traduction.” Introduction. Traduire la littérature et les sciences humaines. Paris: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, 2012, pp. 25–53.

Bibliography

247

———, editor. Translatio. Le marché de la traduction en France à l’heure de la mondialisation. Paris: CNRS Editions, 2008. ———. “Translation and the Field of Publishing. A Commentary on Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘A conservative revolution in publishing.’” Translation Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, 2008, pp. 154–66. Savory, Elaine. “An Interview with Francis Abiola Irele.” Wadabagei. A Journal of the Caribbean and Its Diaspora, vol. 12, no. 1, Winter 2009, pp. 109–32. Schifano, Elsa. L’Edition africaine en France. Portraits. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003. Schiffrin, André. L’Edition sans éditeurs. Paris: La fabrique édition, 1999. Schoolman, Jill. “Found in Translation: Archipelago Books.” The L Magazine, vol. 3, 13–26 Apr. 2005, p. 59. Schudel, Matt. “Donald E. Herdeck Dies; Published Third World Works: [FINAL Edition]”. The Washington Post, 24 Apr. 2005, p. C11. Schulz, Claudia. “Construire le paysage de l’édition dans l’Afrique francophone de l’Ouest durant l’époque post-coloniale.” Les Mutations du livre et de l’édition dans le monde du XVIIe siècle à l’an 2000, edited by Jacques Michon et JeanYves Mollier. Laval, Canada: Les Presses Universitaires de Laval, 2001, pp. 241–50. Sée, Edmond. “Kroniek der Fransche Letteren.” Algemeen Handelsblad. Amsterdam, 24 Dec.1921. http://resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​=ddd​:010655199​:mpeg21​:a0177. Accessed 11 Mar. 2020. Senghor, Léopold Sédar. “René Maran, précurseur de la négritude.” Hommage à René Maran. Paris : Présence Africaine, 1965, pp. 9–13. Serry, Hervé “Constituer un catalogue littéraire. La place des traductions dans l'histoire des Éditions du Seuil.” Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, vol. 144, 2002, pp. 70–79. Shaffi, Sarah. “‘Reconfiguration’ of Man Booker Prize.” The Bookseller, 7 July 2015 http:​/​/www​​.theb​​ookse​​ller.​​com​/n​​ews​/m​​an​-bo​​oke​r-​​30662​​5. Accessed 17 Feb. 2016. Shanes, Eric. Constantin Brancusi. New York, Abbeville Press, 1989. Shatz, Adam. “Wanting to Be Something Else.” London Review of Books. 15 Apr. 2013. https​:/​/ww​​w​.lrb​​.co​.u​​k​/the​​-pape​​r​/v32​​/n01/​​adam-​​shatz​​/want​​ing​-t​​o​-be-​​​somet​​ hing-​​else. Accessed 31 Dec. 2019. Showalter, Elaine. A Jury of her Peers. American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Simenel, Anne-Sophie. “France.” To Be Translated or Not to Be. PEN/IRL report on the international situation of literary translation, edited by Esther Allen, 2007, pp. 85–100. Simeoni, Daniel. “The Pivotal Status of the Translator’s Habitus.” Target, vol. 10, no. 1, 1998, pp. 1–39. Simon, Sherry. Presentation. Traduction engagée/Translation and Social Activism, Special Issue, edited by Sherry Simon TTR XVIII (2), 2005, pp. 9–16. Smouts, Marie-Claude, editor. “Le postcolonial, pour quoi faire.” Introduction. La situation postcoloniale. Les postcolonial studies dans le débat français. Paris : Presses de la fondation nationale des sciences politiques, 2007, pp. 25–66. Snaije, Olivia. “‘L’Autre Agence’ Fights to Change the Image of Literary Agents in France.” Publishing Perspectives, 8 Oct. 2015 http:​/​/pub​​lishi​​ngper​​spect​​ives.​​com​

248

Bibliography

/2​​015​/1​​0​/lau​​tre​-a​​gence​​-figh​​ts​-to​​-chan​​ge​-th​​e​-ima​​ge​-of​​-lite​​rary-​​agent​​​s​-in-​​franc​​e/#​ .Vx45E6ODGkp. Accessed 25 Apr. 2016. ———. “French Literary Agents Create a Professional Alliance,” Publishing Perspectives, 16 Mar. 2016 http:​/​/pub​​lishi​​ngper​​spect​​ives.​​com​/2​​016​/0​​3​/fre​​nch​-l​​ itera​​ry​-ag​​ents-​​creat​​e​-an-​​alli​a​​nce/#​​.Vx5xW6ODGkp. Accessed 25 Jan. 2019. ———. “International Women’s Day 2019: Progress Among Publishers in France.” Publishing Perspectives, 8 Mar. 2019.​https​:/​/pu​​blish​​ingpe​​rspec​​tives​​.com/​​2019/​​03​ /in​​terna​​tiona​​l​-wom​​ens​-d​​ay​-20​​19​-pr​​ogres​​s​-amo​​ng​-p​u​​blish​​ers​-i​​n​-fra​​nce/. Accessed 19 Feb. 2020. ———. “The Translator as Agent.” Publishing Perspectives. 14 Apr. 2014. http:​//​ pub​​ lishi​​ngper​​spect​​ives.​​com​/2​​014​/0​​4​/the​​-tran​​slato​​​r​-as-​​agent​/. Accessed 25 Jan. 2019. Snell-Hornby, Mary. The Turns of Translation Studies. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2006. Spencer, Sally-Ann. “Prizing Translation: Book Awards and Literary Translation.” Perspectives on Literature and Translation: Creation, Circulation, Reception, edited by Brian Nelson and Brigid Maher. New York: Routledge, 2013, pp. 195–209. Steemers, Vivan. Le (néo)colonialisme littéraire. Paris: Karthala, 2012. ———. “Liberation and Commodification of a Postcolonial Author: The Case of Alain Mabanckou.” Journal of the African Literature Association, vol. 8, no. 2, 2014, pp. 195–218. Tadjo, Véronique. “Translation: Spreading the Wings of Literature.” Batchelor and Bisdorff, pp. 98–108. “Tegen Batouala.” Het Vaderland: staat- en letterkundig nieuwsblad. 's-Gravenhage, 23 May 1922. http://resolver​.kb​.nl​/resolve​?urn​=ddd​:010007858​:mpeg21​:a0291. Accessed 11 Mar. 2020. Thiam, Awa. La Parole aux négresses. Paris: Editions Denoël, 1978. Thomas, Dominic. Africa and France. Postcolonial Cultures, Migration, and Racism. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 2013. ———. “‘The Marie NDiaye Affair’” or the Coming of a Postcolonial Evoluée.” Transnational French Studies, Postcolonialism and Littérature-Monde, edited by Alec Hargreaves, Charles Forsdick and David Murphy. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2010, pp. 146–63. Thompson, John B. “Editor’s Introduction.” Language and Symbolic Power. Pierre Bourdieu. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1991, pp. 1–34. ———. Merchants of Culture. The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010. Toman, Cheryl. Introduction. Rencontres essentielles. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2002, pp. ix–xxiv. ———. Afterword. The Fury and Cries of Women. Angèle Rawiri. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2014, pp. 195–223. Tymoczko, Maria. Translation in a Postcolonial Context. Manchester: St. Jerome Publishing, 1999. ———. “Translation in Oral Tradition as a Touchstone for Translation Theory and Practice.” Translation, History and Culture, edited by Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere. London and New York: Pinter Publishers, 1990, 46–55.

Bibliography

249

Umeh, Marie. “The Poetics of Economic Independence for Female Empowerment: An Interview with Flora Nwapa.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 26, no. 2, 1995, pp. 22–29. “Un prix Goncourt, c’est 400.000 ventes en perspective !” Capital, 3 Nov. 2015. https​ :/​/ww​​w​.cap​​ital.​​fr​/ec​​onomi​​e​-pol​​itiqu​​e​/un-​​prix-​​gonco​​urt​-c​​-est-​​400​-0​​00​-ve​​ntes-​​en​-​ pe​​rspec​​tive-​​10830​​34. Accessed 24 Apr. 2017. Vantroys, Carole. “Inaccessible Amérique.” Lire, May 1998, pp. 46–47. Venuti, Lawrence. The Scandals of Translation. Towards an Ethics of Difference. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. ———. The Translator’s Invisibility. A History of Translation.1995. Second edition. Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2008. Vigne, Eric. Le Livre et l’éditeur. Paris: Klincksieck, 2008. Violaines, René. “Mon ami René Maran.” Hommage à René Maran, editor unknown. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1965, pp. 15–41. Volet, Jean-Marie. La parole aux Africaines. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993. Waberi, Abdourahman A. “Les enfants de la postcolonie: Esquisse d’une nouvelle génération d’écrivains d’Afrique noire.” Notre Librairie, vol. 135, 1998, pp. 8–15. Warner, Tobias. “How Mariama Bâ Became World Literature: Translation and the Legibility of Feminist Critique.” PMLA, vol. 131, no. 5, 2016, pp. 1239–55. Waters, Julia. “Ananda Devi as Transcolonial Translator.” Batchelor and Bisdorff, pp. 216–34. Watts, Richard. Packaging Post/Coloniality. The Manufacture of Literary Identity in the Francophone World. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005. Wise, Christopher. Yambo Ouologuem: Postcolonial Writer, Islamic Militant. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999. Wisschenbart, Rüdiger, editor. Diversity Report 2016. Trends and references in literary translations across Europe. Verein für kulturelle transfers. www​.culturaltransfers​.org. Accessed 2 May 2019. ———. Diversity Report 2018. Trends in Literary Translations in Europe. Verein für kulturelle transfers. www​.culturaltransfers​.org. Accessed 2 May 2019. Wolf, Michaela. “The Sociology of Translation and Its ‘Activist Turn.’” Translation and Interpretation Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, 2012, pp. 129–43. Wolf, Michaela and Alexandra Fukari. Constructing a Sociology of Translation. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2007. Wolfe, Alexandra. “Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie on the World of African Literature.” The Wall Street Journal. 1 May 2015. https​:/​/pe​​n​.org​​/pres​​s​-cli​​p​/chi​​maman​​da​-ng​​ozi​ -a​​dichi​​e​-on-​​the​-w​​orld-​​of​-af​​​rican​​-lite​​ratur​​e/. Accessed 30 May 2019.

ARCHIVES Institut Mémoires de l’Edition Contemporaine, L’Abbeye d’Ardenne, Normandy, France. Dorothy Blair Archives, Westminster University, London, UK. https​:/​/we​​stmin​​ster-​​ atom.​​arkiv​​um​.ne​​t​/ind​​ex​​.ph​​p​/dbg​. Accessed 13 Mar. 2020.

Index

Note: Page locators in italics refer to figures. The Abandoned Baobab (Bugul), 20, 97n27, 133–34, 139, 145–46, 162n36 abstraction, 2–3 Académie Française, 51 Académie Goncourt, 51 acculturation, 11 Achebe, Chinua, 70, 83 acquisitions, 31, 63–65 Actes Sud, 50, 53, 60n56, 61n65 activists, translators as, 9–10, 151–59 activist turn, 9–10 Actor-Network Theory (ANT), 153 Adaffi, Jean-Marie, 39 ADELF. See Association des Ecrivains de Langue Française Adesokan, Akin, 87, 99n58 Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozie, 88 aesthetic value, 6 Africa Beyond the Mirror (Diop, B.), 87 Africana Womanism (Hudson-Weems), 143 African book famine, 95n19 African governments: censorship by, 38–39; financial support from, 34 Africanness, 17, 28n41 African Writers Series (AWS), 163n41; discontinued, 95n19; Heinemann

Educational Books and, 10, 14, 45, 66–71, 80–83, 134, 180 Afropéa, 16, 27n36 Agatha Moudio’s Son (Bebey), 81 Albin Michel, 4, 42, 60n56, 171–72 Allah Is Not Obliged (Kourouma), 18, 86–87, 106 allographic preface, 174, 186–89 ALTA. See American Literary Translators Association Ambiguous Adventure (Kane), 68 American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), 111 amnesia, of France, 39, 40, 57n18 The Amputated Memory (La Mémoire amputée) (Liking), 20, 108 Anchor Books, 18 And Other Stories, 119 Anglo-American publishing field, 54, 63 anglophone intellectual movement, 51 Angot, Christine, 35 ANT. See Actor-Network Theory anti-colonialism, 84 anti-feminism, 151 Appanah, Natasha, 35 appropriation, 1, 4, 201; of African texts, 22; process of, 14

251

252

Index

Apter, Emily, 6, 33 Archipelago Books, 66, 73, 81, 88 Armory Show, 3 Arnold, James, 76 art: allegory between tribal and modernist, 4; avant-garde, 1; music, writing and, 36 The Ashanti Doll (Bebey), 70 Asholt, Wolfgang, 36 Association des Ecrivains de Langue Française (ADELF), 107, 122n19 auctorial freedom, 19 authenticity, 8, 27n35, 174, 178–79 authority: claim to, 102; racism and, 184; realities of power and, 33; of translators, 10 authors. See specific types auto-heteronomy, 14 avant-garde art, 1 AWS. See African Writers Series Awumey, Edem, 53 Bâ, Amadou Hampaté, 85, 92, 107, 122n22 Bâ, Mariama: feminism and, 150–51; So Long a Letter by, 10–11, 22, 71–72, 85, 108, 133–38, 140–45 backstage dynamic, 25n16 Badian, Seydou, 85 Bancel, Nicolas, 52 Bandia, Paul, 33 Baram Reid, Amy, 153–54 Barbery, Muriel, 82 Barry, Mariama, 85 Bassnett, Susan, 9, 82 Basto, Maria-Beneditto, 50 Batchelor, Kathryn, 14–15, 28n38, 32, 84–85 Batouala (Maran), 4–5, 21, 29n45, 99n65, 169–70; authenticity of, 8; British translation of, 195n41; literary prizes for, 104–5, 121n6; preface of, 174–77, 196n50; reception of, in France, 171–74; reception of, in Germany, 177–79;

reception of, in United States, 179–81, 196n44; reception of Dutch translation of, in Dutch East Indies, 190–92; reception of French edition of, in Dutch East Indies, 187–88; reception of French edition of, in Netherlands, 181–87; scandal provoked by, 23; translation rights for, 196n51; translations of, 57n23, 171–91; versions of, 193n22 Batouala affair, 184, 197n53 Beasts of No Nation (Uzodinma), 87 Bebey, Francis, 70–71, 81, 107 The Beggars Strike (Sow Fall), 133–40, 149–51, 165n68 Benjamin, Walter, 13 Ben Jelloun, Tahar, 35, 50, 126n54 bestsellers: formula for, 18; intellectual, 64–65, 94nn6–8; international, 21; status of, 120n3 Best Translated Book Award, 112–14, 124n41 Between Tides (Mudimbe), 82, 98n52 Beyala, Calixthe, 133 biases, 22 bibliographies, 15 BIEF. See Bureau international de l’édition française bilingualism, 10 The Black/African Child (L’Enfant noir) (Camara Laye), 19–20, 54, 62n74, 72 black metropolitan (négropolitain), 39 blackness, 1 Blair, Dorothy, 25n13, 74, 136, 150, 153–55, 158, 160n18; on feminine solidarity, 163n45; mission of, 201; Sow Fall and, 166n73 Blanchard, Pascal, 52 La Blanche, 50 The Blond Negress, 2 Bollingen Prize, 103 Booker Prize, 8, 93, 103–5 book production: French, 32; material conditions governing, 132; translation and, 72

Index

Borel, Henri, 184–87, 197n59 Bound to Violence (Ouologuem), 45, 106 Bourdieu, Pierre, 51, 89, 157; concepts of, 102; editorial modes of functioning and, 64–65; The Field of Cultural Production by, 6; field of cultural production theory, 6–7, 24n6, 117, 121n11; on hierarchical system, 94n6; objective complicity and, 18; on Le Seuil, 60n48 Bowker, 31–32 Boyce Davies, Carol, 142–43, 164n51 Brancusi, Constantin, 1–5, 23n1, 204, 205n4 branding: as form of recognition, 52; of francophone sub-Saharan literature, 82–89; process of, 89 British Tyre and Rubber (BTR), 95n19 Brouillette, Sarah, 24nn9, 10, 144 BTR. See British Tyre and Rubber Buchet Chastel, 67 Bugul, Ken, 16, 22, 72, 164n57, 165n58–59; The Abandoned Baobab by, 20, 97n27, 133–34, 139, 145–46, 162n36; Riwan or the Sand Path by, 146–49 Bureau international de l’édition française (BIEF), 34, 127n60 Bush, Ruth, 24n9, 25n13, 59n44 Cadioli, Alberto, 18 Cadre vert collection, 46 Calargé, Carla, 39–40, 58n32, 72 Calisi Press, 119 Camara Laye, 39, 43–44, 82; The Black/ African Child by, 19–20, 54, 62n74, 72, 91; A Dream of Africa by, 81; The Radiance of the King by, 53, 92–93 Cape, Jonathan, 23n4 capital intraconversion, 102 CARAF series, 75–79, 81, 97n27, 199 Casanova, Pascale, 7, 24n8, 72 Caught in a Storm (Badian), 85

253

censorship, 38–39, 190 central languages, 8, 56n9 Centre de Littérature Evangélique (CLE), 46, 133 Centre National du Livre, 93, 124n35 Cerceuil & Cie (Njami), 17 Certeau, Michel, 94n6 Cévaër, Françoise, 38–39, 47, 57n25, 60n51, 123n26, 161n22 Chakava, Henry, 20, 83 Chamoiseau, Patrick, 49, 76 chant-roman (song-novel), 20 Chaulet Achour, Christiane, 102 Chave, Anna C., 3 Chédid, Andrée, 35 Chevrier, Jacques, 84 Children at War (Singer), 87 chronotopes, 138, 170–71, 183, 191, 203 CLE. See Centre de Littérature Evangélique Clifford, James, 3–4, 163n49 Cold War, 81 colonialism, 4, 29n48, 143, 160n9, 182–83; beneficial effects of, 174; Republican ideology and, 52 colonial past, immigration, national identity and, 52 colonial trauma, 52 The Columbia Guide to West African Literature, 108 commercialization, 55 commodification: cycle of, 94n4; of marginality, 8 “Continents noirs” series, 50, 61n64 core-periphery systemic model, 8 corporations: myths about, 64; steady growth of, 31; success of, 63 corpus narratives, 98n51; acknowledgement of, 109; availability of, 79–81; contribution per decade of publisher category of, 69; creation of, 14–21; dominant theme per decade of, 84; feminine, 22–23; gender diversity of authors

254

Index

of, 131–32; number of publications per decade, per publisher category, 46, 48; number of published original and English translations of, 40; original French publications per publisher category, 46; overall contribution per publisher category, 68; overview of first six, by female authors, 135; publication of French language edition of, 36–37; publication of original, 38, 40; publishers for, 42, 67–73; thematic focus of, 88–89; translation time lag between original and English translation of, 54; visibility of, 199 Couchoro, Félix, 40 Coulon, Virginie, 15 Cruel City (Ville cruelle) (Mongo Beti), 54, 59n42, 62n75, 77–78, 90–91 cultivation system, 183 cultural capital, 7, 103 cultural distribution, 33 cultural identities, 11–12, 72, 181, 201 cultural mediators, 6 cultural producers, 42 cultural production, 6, 32, 53, 94n6, 196n48 Cultural Services of the French Embassy, 15, 32, 111, 115–16, 125n43 cultural turn, translation studies and, 10, 82–83, 151 culture: interconnectedness between society and, 9; marginal, 11; minorities committing to, 36 Currey, James, 66–67, 70 cynical commercial logic, 70 Dadié, Bernard, 43, 45 A Dakar Childhood (Diallo, N.), 85, 134–39 Dalkey Archive Press, 75 Dambre, Marc, 36 Damrosch, David, 13, 78–79, 81–82, 98n42, 170, 177 Dapper, 49

Dark Heart of the Night (Miano), 91, 109–10 Decolonizing Translation (Batchelor), 14–15 Deep Vellum Publishing, 66–67, 81 Demain j’aurai vingt ans (Tomorrow I Will Be Twenty Years Old) (Mabanckou), 50 Devi, Ananda, 19, 29n44, 61n64 diachronic position, 6 Diagne, Ahmadou Mapaté, 40 Diallo, Bakary, 40 Diallo, Nafissatou, 22, 72, 85, 134–39 Dib, Mohammed, 45 Dicker, Joël, 102 Diome, Fatou, 35, 52, 133 Diop, Alioune, 46–47, 59n39, 97n37 Diop, Boubacar Boris, 87, 122n23 Diop, Christiane Yande, 47 Diouf, Mbaye, 16 distillation, 2–3 Djebar, Assia, 102 Doguicimi (Hazoumé), 40 domestication, 11, 28n43, 185–86 domestic values, 11 Dongola, Emmanuel, 82 double appartenance, 28n38 doublement structuré, 33 Douwes Dekker, Edouard, 181–91 Dramé, Kandioura, 76 A Dream of Africa (Camara Laye), 81 Dressler, Claus Peter, 15 Ducas, Sylvie, 104–7, 117–18, 120n4 Ducournau, Claire, 18–19, 27n30, 27n35, 28n38, 124n34, 159n1; on cultural events, 123n27; on literary prizes, 107; observations of, 41; on production of francophone sub-Saharan literature, 37, 48–49; research by, 133 ebooks, 31, 80, 98n42 economic capital, 22, 65 The Economy of Prestige (English), 102

Index

255

Les Ecrivains noirs de la langue française (Kesteloot), 19 Editions de Minuit, 45 effervescence, 49 Efoui, Kossi, 49 egalitarianism, 186 L’Enfant noir (The Black/African Child) (Camara Laye), 19–20, 54, 62n74, 72 English, James, 102, 120n3 entrapment, identity, 17 equivalence, concept of, 9 L’Esclave (Couchoro), 40 Essential Encounters (KuohMoukoury), 21 essentialism, 172 ethnocentrism, 11–12, 14 exoticism, 164n56, 171 exploitation, 8; of foreign authors, 170; of women, 144 extraduction, 32

Flammarion, 42, 94 Force-Bonté (Diallo, B.), 40 foreignization, 12, 26n17 foreign policies, 11 Foucault, Michel, 10, 138 Francophonies, 102, 136 French-American Foundation, 112, 124n39 French Empire, 39 Frenchness: reception of, 82; symbolic capital and, 34; unpopularity of, 34–36 French Publishers Agency, 15, 34, 56n15 French Revolution, 39 French Voices Award, 112–15, 125n43, 127n59, 200 Frisani, Marcella, 34–36, 82 Les Fugitives, 119 Fukari, Alexandra, 9

Fall, Malick, 83 Far from my Father (Tadjo), 86 Faust complex, 104 female authors, 1, 72, 131–32; francophone, sub-Saharan, 77; impact on publishers, 128n66; literary prizes for, 201; ordinariness of, 138–40; overview of first six corpus narratives by, 135; recognition for, 22–23, 101, 106, 113, 116 Femina, Prix, 104, 106, 110 feminism, 131–32, 136, 149, 201; African, 147–48, 160n9, 162n34, 164n52; Bâ, M., and, 150–51; of Blair, 155; condition of women and, 166n74; Islamic, 142–45, 164n53 Feraoun, Mouloud, 45 fermenting, 14, 26n24, 199, 203 The Field of Cultural Production (Bourdieu), 6 field of cultural production theory, 6–7, 24n6, 117, 121n11 Flamand, Paul, 45

Gage, Matilda Joslyn, 106 Gallimard, 6, 17, 42, 48–50, 61n60, 105 Gaston-Joseph, 169, 173–74 Gauguin, Paul, 3 Geist, Sidney, 2–3 gender diversity: of authors of corpus narratives, 131–32; minority writers, translation awards and, 113–18; of translators, 126n50 gendered subjectivity, 120n1 gender roles, 132 Genette, Gérard, 137–38, 161nn23–24, 192n4, 195n36 genocide, Rwandan, 86–87 genres, 10, 20 Gentzler, Edwin, 10–12, 26n17 ghettoization, 50 Giacometti, Alberto, 3 Giovanni, Nikki, 145–46 Glissant, Edouard, 49 Global African Voices, 77–78, 81, 97n31, 98n39, 199 globalization, 49, 51 Godine, David, 74

256

Index

God’s Bits of Wood (Sembène), 72 Goll, Claire, 177 Goncourt Prize, 4–5, 17–18, 51, 103–6, 120n3, 121n12, 172, 179, 200 Grand prix littéraire de l’Afrique noire, 7, 106–7, 150 Graphs, Maps and Trees (Moretti), 36–37 Grasset, 42, 43, 53, 60n56, 61n64, 105 Guebogue, Charles, 47 habitus, 151–52 Hachette Livre, 41, 58n36, 93n2 Hahn, Daniel, 119 Harcourt Education, 80 L’Harmattan, 43, 47–50, 59n39, 60n54 Havas Publications Edition (HPE), 94n4 Hazoumé, Paul, 40 Heilbron, Johan, 8, 32, 55n4 Heinemann Educational Books, 16; AWS and, 10, 14, 44, 66–71, 80–83, 134, 180; rights acquired by, 95n18 Heinemann Kenya Ltd., 20 Herdeck, Donald E., 180–81 Higginson, Pim, 77–78 Hitchcott, Nicki, 139, 146, 150 horizon of expectation, 170–71, 191, 203–4 Houseboy (Une Vie de boy) (Oyono), 56n13, 70, 80, 100n54 HPE. See Havas Publications Edition Hudson-Weems, Clenora, 143 Huggan, Graham, 8, 24n9 hybridization, 23n1 hybrid languages, literarization of, 33 hyperlecteurs, 18, 34–35 Ibironke, Olabode, 13–14 ideological homology, 18 ideology, 10, 25n14; poetics and, 167n76; Republican, 52, 58n32 immigration: colonial past, national identity and, 51–52; of Muslims, 52 Independent Alliance, 66

Independent Foreign Fiction Award, 113–14, 124n41 Index Translationum (UNESCO), 32 Indiana University Press, 54, 71, 77, 97n31, 98n39, 199 indigenous languages, literarization of, 33 innovation, 75 institutional agents, 6 interconnectedness, 9 International Dublin Literary Award, 111–14 International Exhibition of Modern Art, 1913, 3 international literary space, 6 international literature, world, thirdworld and, 81–82 interventionist paratext, 13 intraduction, 32 The Invention of Africa (Mudimbe), 14 Irele, Abiola, 71, 96n21, 163n41 Islamic law, 141 isolationism, 56n10, 202 de Jager, Marjolijn, 145–47, 153–59, 167nn88–90 Jahn, Janheinz, 15 Jarrett-Macauley, Delia, 87 Johnny Mad Dog (Dongola), 82 Johnson, Randal, 6 de Jong, A. M., 189–90 journalistic capital, 22, 120n5 journalistic critics, 5 Juletane (Warner-Vieyra), 16, 27n37 Jury of Her Peers, 117 Kaïdara (Bâ, A. H.), 85, 92, 107, 122n22 Kane, Cheikh Hamidou, 68, 102 Karim (Socé), 91 Kemp, Simon, 36 Kesteloot, Lilyan, 19, 29n46, 84, 92 Khadra, Yasmina, 35 Kibble, Matt, 71, 80 King, Adèle, 26n29, 44, 93, 168n90

Index

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 64 knowledge, production of, 10 Kourouma, Ahmadou, 18, 35, 107; Allah Is Not Obliged by, 86–87, 106; Renaudot Prize for, 61n67, 87; The Suns of Independence by, 46, 85; Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals by, 85 Kuoh-Moukoury, Thérèse, 21 Laferrière, Dany, 35, 50, 61n69 Laffont, 67 Lahire, Bernard, 103 languages, 25n15; African, 96n21; central, 8, 56n9; of communication, 38; hybrid, 33; indigenous, 33; semiperipheral, 8; soft power of, 7; supercentral, 8 Larrier, Renée, 76 Larson, Stieg, 82 Latour, Bruno, 153 Lawrence Hill Books, 70 Lefevere, André, 9, 12–13, 25n14, 26n19, 82 Léger, Fernand, 3 legitimizing machinery, 8 Lepape, Pierre, 13 The Lights of Pointe-Noire (Mabanckou), 86, 115–16 Liking, Werewere, 20, 60n50, 108, 133 linguistic innovation, 56n14 literacy rates, 58n26 literarization, of indigenous and hybrid languages, 33 literary agents, for authors, 66 literary analysis, 6 literary diversity, 116 literary prizes, 88–92, 99nn60, 61, 101, 199–200; categories of, 22; for female authors, 201; for foreign fiction, 110–13; francophone and African, 106–10; hyperinflation of, 103; juries of, 6; number of, per category, 108; prestigious, French, 102–6. See also specific types

257

literature: fringes of, 32; materialist critique of, 8 Little Boys Come from the Stars (Dongola), 82 Lopès, Henri, 107 Loupias, Bernard, 49 Low, Gail, 70, 83–84 Mabanckou, Alain, 35, 74, 104–5, 126n56; The Lights of Pointe-Noire by, 86, 115–16; Memoirs of a Porcupine by, 48, 51, 106, 110 Magnier, Bernard, 49 Man Booker International Prize, 51, 93, 110–14, 117, 125n46 Maran, René, 100n65, 121n6, 197n53, 197n57; background of, 192n2; description of, 187; integrity of, 176– 77; message of, 192; prosecution of, 183–84; racial identity presented by, 179. See also Batouala marginality, commodification and exoticization of, 8 marginalization: of authors, 39; period of, 49 Marxist cultural theory, 8 masterpieces, 79 materialist approach, 5, 203 materiality, 137, 161n25 the Matilda effect, 106, 110, 200 the Matthew effect, 106, 110, 116, 127n58 Mawenzi House Publishers, 68 Max Havelaar (Douwes Dekker), 181–91 Mbari Club, 25n13 media, attention from, 49 Méditerranée label, 45 La Mémoire amputée (The Amputated Memory) (Liking), 20, 108 Memoirs of a Porcupine (Mémoires d’un porc-épic) (Mabanckou), 48, 50, 106, 110 Merchants of Culture (Thompson), 31, 63–64

258

Index

Merton, Robert, 106 metropolitan authors, 107 Miano, Léonora, 16, 27n36, 91–92, 109–10, 116–17, 123n24, 123n31 Michaux, Henri, 102 migrant novel, 24n8, 52 migrant writers, 57n21 Miller, Christopher, 29n48, 134–37, 161n22, 162n37 Millet, Catherine, 35 minority authors, 101–2; gender diversity, translation awards and, 113–18; recognition for, 105–6 Mitagari (Thiong’o), 20 modernism, 4 MOMA. See Museum of Modern Art Monénembo, Tierno, 107 Mongo Beti, 39, 58n28, 97n37; Cruel City by, 54, 59n42, 62n75, 77–78, 90–91; narratives by, 70–71; Perpetua and the Habit of Unhappiness by, 83; The Poor Christ of Bomba by, 43–44, 62n74, 81, 90, 99n64; Présence Africaine and, 47– 48, 62n75, 67; sales numbers for, 67 Moretti, Franco, 13, 21, 36–37 Morrison, Donald, 35 Morrison, Toni, 92–93, 158 Mortimer, Mildred, 16, 76–77 Moses, Citizen, and Me (JarrettMacauley), 87 Mudimbe, V. Y., 14, 82, 98n52 Mukasonga, Scholastique, 50; Our Lady of the Nile by, 50, 88, 106, 115–16; Renaudot Prize won by, 88 Müller, Herta, 112 Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), 3–4, 163n49 Muslims, immigration of, 53

NDiaye, Marie, 17–18, 28n40 NEA. See Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines Negritude, 4, 169, 176–77; opinions on, 91–92; poetry, 29n45 negro-ness, 178 négropolitain (black metropolitan), 39 netherworld, 3, 23n1 New Horn Press, 68, 163n41 New Negro movement, 5 Njami, Simon, 17, 27n38, 60n51 Nobel Prize for Literature, 93, 105–6; Sartre and, 121n8; symbolic capital of, 102 Noma, Shoïchi, 107–8 Noma Prize, 107–8, 134 The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, 79 Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines (NEA), 22, 37, 46, 72–73, 133–39, 160n15 Nouvelles Editions Ivoiriennes, 46

narcissism, 11 national identity: colonial past, immigration and, 51–51; debate, 52 national literary fields, 6 National Translation Award, 111

Pagli (Devi), 19, 29n44 Pamuk, Orhan, 112 Pantheon Books, 64 paratext, 5, 18, 22, 161n23; changing, 170; contextualization by English,

objective complicity, 18 The Old Man and the Medal (Oyono), 81 Orientalism (Said), 14, 26n23 Ormerod, Beverley, 17 Oswald, P. J., 47 otherness, 4, 51 Ouologuem, Yambo, 45, 106 Our Lady of the Nile (Mukasonga), 50, 88, 106, 115–16 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, 111, 124n35 Oyono, Ferdinand, 43–45, 56n13, 71, 83; as anti-colonial, 90; Houseboy by, 56n13, 70, 88, 99n54; The Old Man and the Medal by, 81

Index

89–93; interventionist, 13; reception and, 140–51 Paratexts (Genette), 137–38 Les Paroles aux Africaines (Volet), 15 Perpetua and the Habit of Unhappiness (Mongo Beti), 83 perspective, international, 35 Philippe Rey, 50, 61n65 Picasso, Pablo, 3 Pickford, Susan, 101–2, 120n5 plagiarism, 45 Plato, 3 Plon, 53 plurilingual translation, 33 poetics, 25n14, 167n76 political act, translation as, 23, 119, 152–55, 201 political capital, 103 political crisis, 38 polygyny/polygamy, 82, 141–43, 147– 49, 163n43 The Poor Christ of Bomba (Mongo Beti), 44, 62n74, 90, 99n54 99n64 Porra, Véronique, 172–73, 177–78, 193n14 Post, Chad, 31–32, 118 postcolonial peripheries, 5 postcolonial studies, 10, 51 postmodernism, 51 Pound, Ezra, 3 power, 8; dimensions of, 6; manipulation and, 9; privilege and, 32; realities of authority and, 33; status and, 10 prefaces: allographic, 174, 186–89; of Batouala, 174–77, 196n50; functioning of, 195n36; writers of, 6 Présence Africaine, 6, 43, 47–48, 50, 59n39, 62n75, 67, 136 Presses de la Cité, 41, 53 Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 45 prestige, 6 primitive objects, 3 primitivism, 3, 23n1 “Primitivism” exhibition, 3

259

privilege, power and, 32 profitability, 65 ProQuest CSA, 71, 80 Pryen, Denis, 47 psychological naturalism, 174 publisher categories: contribution per decade of, for corpus narratives, 69; number of publications of original corpus narratives per decade per, 44, 47; original French publications of corpus narratives per, 43; overall contribution per, of corpus narratives, 68 publishers: in Africa, 37; AngloAmerican, 67–68; for corpus narratives, 42; of English translations of corpus narratives, 67–73; female authors, impact on, 128n65; foreign, 5; of French to English translations, 73–75; mainstream, 7, 41–53, 60n56, 61n65, 67–69, 123n27, 137; nonprofit, 94n10; size and reputation of, 42; specialized, 6–7, 37, 41–53, 59n39, 81, 90, 199; symbolic capital and, 41–49; translators relationship with, 157; types of, 35 publishing, 31; ethics of, 8; traditional compared to non-traditional, 55n2 Pulitzer Prize, 104 quantitative data, 36–37 Le quimboiseur l’avait dit (WarnerVieyra), 16 racial identity, 179–80 racism, 172, 180, 184 The Radiance of the King (Le Regard du roi) (Camara Laye), 53, 92–93 Random House, 18, 64, 157 rationalization, 41, 63 realism, 171, 192n8 Reed, John, 154 Le Regard du roi (The Radiance of the King) (Camara Laye), 53, 92–93 Reid, Amy B., 156–57

260

relative dependence, 51 Remapping African Literature (Ibironke), 13–14 Renaissance, 3 Renaudot Prize, 48, 50, 51, 61n67, 87, 88, 103–5, 122n18, 200 repression, 39 Republican ideology, 52, 58n32 resistance: to social norms, 56n11; translatedness as form of, 12 return to the narrative (retour au récit), 36 reversed extraversion, 87 rewriting: translation, remodeling and, 19; translation as, 25n12 Reynolds, Matthew, 111 Riwan or the Sand Path (Riwan ou Le chemin desable) (Bugul), 146–49 Roblès, Emmanuel, 46 Rossiter, Margaret W., 106 Rouet, François, 41–42 Ruiz Zafón, Carlos, 82 Russo, Albert, 18–19 Sabo, Oana, 24nn8–9, 61n68 Said, Edward, 14, 26n23, 33 Sansal, Boualem, 35 Sapiro, Gisèle, 33, 36, 53, 55n7, 65, 99n53 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 52 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 121n8 scandal, Batouala provoking, 23 The Scandals of Translation (Venuti), 19 Schifano, Elsa, 49 Schifano, Jean-Noël, 49, 61n60 Schiffrin, André, 64, 75 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 12 Schoolman, Jill, 66 sculpture, 1–4 Seagull Books, 68 Season of the Shadow (Miano), 92 self-criticism, 11 self-indulgence, 34–35

Index

self-publishing, 31, 55n2 Seltzer, Adele, 57n23, 179–80, 196n46 Seltzer, Thomas, 57n23, 95n13, 179–80 Sembène, Ousmane, 45, 48, 71–72, 83, 122n22 semi-peripheral languages, 8 Senghor, Léopold Sédar, 4, 25n13, 37, 102 Le Serpent à Plumes, 49, 61n65, 134, 165n68 Serpent’s Tail, 74, 81 Le Seuil, 42, 43, 45–46, 48, 50, 59n44, 53, 60n48, 105 sex, 70–71 The Shameful State (Tansi), 85 Showalter, Elaine, 117 Simenel, Anne-Sophie, 32 Simenon, Georges, 36 Singer, P. W., 87 Smouts, Marie-Claude, 51 Socé, Ousmane, 91 social dimensions, 7 social justice, 185 social media, 103 society, interconnectedness between culture and, 9 sociological turn, in translation, 152 Soft Skull Press, 66–67, 74, 94n9 soft violence, 120n1 So Long a Letter (Bâ, M.), 10–11, 22, 71–72, 85, 108, 133–38, 140–45 song-novel (chant-roman), 20 Sow Fall, Aminata, 22, 72, 133–40, 149–51, 154–55, 166n69, 166n73 Spiers, John, 14 Stella Count, 118 stereotypes: degree of, 88–89; ethnic, 11 Stevenson, Helen, 153 subtitle, 5, 20, 23n4, 145, 169, 171-177, 178, 179-180, 184, 188, 195n41 The Suns of Independence (Kourouma), 44, 85 super-central languages, 8

Index

de Swaan, Abram, 8 symbolic capital, 22, 200; accumulation of, 65; circulation of, 89; Frenchness and, 34; of Nobel Prize, 102; publishers and, 41–48; of translation, 203 symbolic value, 6–7 synergy phase, 63 TA. See Translators Association Tadjo, Véronique, 25n13, 29n49, 86, 133, 204 Tansi, Sony Labou, 85 taxonomic shift, 4 tertium comparationis, 9 Texaco (Chamoiseau), 76 thematic focus: categories of, 84–86; of corpus narratives, 88–89; evolvement of, 202 Things Fall Apart (Achebe), 83 Thiong’o, Ngugi wa, 20 third-world literature, world, international and, 81–82 Thomas Seltzer Inc., 179, 196n46 Thompson, John B., 31, 63–64, 152 “Three Percent” website, 15, 31–32, 118, 124n41, 202 Three Strong Women (Trois Femmes puissantes) (NDiaye), 17–18 Time Warner Book Group, 93n2 Tomorrow I Will Be Twenty Years Old (Demain j’aurai vingt ans) (Mabanckou), 51 trade patterns, 11 translatedness, 12, 55, 82 translation, 96n24, 115–16; book production and, 72; critics of, 5; cultural identities formed via, 11; foreignization of, 26n18; of francophone sub-Saharan texts, 87; gender imbalance in, 118–20; increase in, 55n5; international system of, 32; paratextual framework of, 22; plurilingual, 33;

261

as political act, 23, 119, 152–55, 201; rewriting, remodeling and, 19; as rewriting, 25n12; Sapiro on, 98n53; sociological turn in, 151–52; symbolic capital of, 203; Venuti on capacity of, 181 translation awards/grants, 8, 101, 110– 18, 200 translation ethics, 167 translation hierarchy, 8, 25n14 Translation History and Culture (Bassnett and Lefevere), 9, 82 translations: of Batouala, 57n23, 171–91; delayed, 12; implications of, 9; publishers of corpus narratives in English, 67–73; publishers of French to English, 73–75; world system of, 8 translation strategies, 5 translation studies, 9, 10, 82, 151 translation theory: concept of equivalence and, 9; postcolonial, 10 translation time lag, 41, 49, 54, 53–55 translation timeline, 39–40 translators, 5, 6; as activists, 9–10, 151– 59; gender of, 117–18; as invisible, 82; omitting names of, 81; public service, 34; publishers, relationship with, 157; recognition for, 112–14 Translators Association (TA), 119 transnational circulation, 9 transnationalisms, 7 transnational mobility, 16 tribal objects, 3 Triolet, Elsa, 105 Trois Femmes puissantes (Three Strong Women) (Ndiaye), 17–18 Les Trois Volontés de Malic (Diagne), 40 Tropiques, Prix, 109 Tymoczko, Maria, 10 universalism, 28n41 universality, 35 universe of discourse, 25n14

262

Index

University of Nebraska Press, 91, 97n26 University of Rochester, 15 University of Virginia Press, 71, 75–77, 199 university presses, American, 21–22, 73, 83, 137, 199–200; influence of, 90; mission of, 75–79; responsibility of, 81. See also specific types Uzodinma, Iweala, 87 Venuti, Lawrence, 11–12, 19, 26n17, 83; on capacity of translation, 181; domestication and, 28n43 Vergès, Françoise, 51 Une Vie de boy (Houseboy) (Oyono), 56n13, 70, 88, 99n54 Vieyra, Paulin Soumanou, 16 Ville cruelle. See Cruel City Virago, 140–42, 163n41 visibility, 5, 158, 160n11; accrued, 13; attaining, 21; of corpus narratives, 199; increasing, 50; from literary prizes, 102; struggle for, 31; of translators, 82 Volet, Jean-Marie, 15, 17 Vollmann, Caroline, 178 Waberi, Abdourahman, 26n29, 50 Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals (Kourouma), 85 Wake, Clive, 153 Walker, Alice, 143

Walker Publishing Company, 68 Wallerstein, Immanuel, 8 Warner-Vieyra, Myriam, 16–17, 27n37 Waters, Julia, 19 Watts, Richard, 24n9, 138, 161n26 Wauthier, Claude, 44 Waveland Press, 81, 163n44 The White Negress II, 1–4, 23n1 whiteness, 1 William Collins Sons & Co, 81 Wilson, Betty, 16–17 Wolf, Michaela, 9, 152 womanism, Africana, 143–44, 164n52 women’s rights, 142 Women Writers in Francophone Africa (Hitchcott), 150 world-readability, 144 world fiction, 13, 25n10 world literature, 5, 200; international, third-world and, 81–82; labeling, 78–79 World Republic of Letters, 39, 65, 199 The World Republic of Letters (Casanova), 7, 72 World War I, 173, 177, 182, 187, 191 World War II, 81, 204 The Wound (Fall), 83 xenophobia, 56n10, 105, 119, 202 Yourcenar, Marguerite, 102

About the Author

Vivan Steemers is an associate professor of French at Western Michigan University. She is the author of Le (néo)colonialisme littéraire (Karthala, 2012).

263