All three [of Mongo Beti's novels, Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba, Mission terminée, and Le Roi miraculé,] comment, in a mixture of light-hearted farce and bitter satire, on the problems encountered in the quest for an "intellectual direction," and present us with a critical portrayal of the man of ideas, the potential guide of the disoriented African.

Mongo Beti has not been generally considered in this light. Critics have usually spoken of him as one of Africa's foremost authors, "a formidable satirist and one of the most percipient critics of European colonialism," or, like Wole Soyinka and Robert Pageard, they have stressed his realistic portrayal of African life and praised his work…. In a sense Mongo Beti himself is responsible for this one-sided appreciation of his work, for he has chosen to set his portrayal of the man of ideas in the incongruous locale of the bush...