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- Title
Of Murder and Love: Peregrinations of the African Detective Writer.
- Authors
TCHUMKAM, HERVÉ
- Abstract
This article discusses the status of the African detective writer in franco-phone Africa, using examples by Driss Chraibi and Mongo Beti, two key figures of francophone African literatures. I offer a reading of L'inspecteur Ali and Trap de Soleil tue I'amour as novels that signal the shift of both writ-ers from the realist novel to crime fiction. I also scrutinize the metafictional comments in the novels, that is, passages when fiction deals with the writ-ing of fiction as a whole, and the conventions and potentialities of detective fiction in French-speaking Africa. I therefore propose that the practice of detective fiction does not necessarily lead to the popularity of the writer. Rather, I suggest that-given that the novels I have studied also expose love, murder, and politics, none of which seems to guarantee celebrity-the ultimate lesson with regard to the status of the French-speaking African detective writer is that he seems to only enjoy a post mortem popularity, one that clearly rests on profanation.
- Subjects
FRENCH detective &; mystery stories; AFRICAN literature (French); L'INSPECTEUR Ali (Book); TROP de soleil tue l'amour (Book); CHRAIBI, Driss; BETI, Mongo; AFRICAN literature -- History &; criticism
- Publication
Research in African Literatures, 2012, Vol 43, Issue 4, p38
- ISSN
0034-5210
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.2979/reseafrilite.43.4.38