SOURCE: A review of La main sèche, in World Literature Today, Vol. 56, No. 1, Winter, 1982, pp. 162-63.

In the favorable review below, Sellin maintains that the stories in La main sèche "deserve the most careful intellectual scrutiny."

Tchicaya's short stories [in La main sèche], published the same year as his first novel, Les cancrelats, have the same triple thrust as that novel. First, there is the surreal and fascinating style; second, there is the blend of Western Christianity and African tradition; and third, there is the proverbial tone to the diction. Particularly salient in these tales is the fascinating blend of Christian elements and the personal African optics of the narrator. A black baby who takes the place of a papier-mâché Jesus in a crèche has been abandoned by its mother. Or are we actually witnessing the Second Coming? In another story a talking...