SOURCE: “An Approach to Ouologuem's Le Devoir de violence,” in African Literature Today: 10 Retrospect & Prospect, Africana Publishing Company, 1979, pp. 124- 33.

In the following essay, Ohaegbu examines Ouologuem's use of violence to show different aspects of human nature.

A lot has been said about the controversial Malian writer Yambo Ouologuem, and his novel Le Devoir de Violence translated in English as Bound to Violence.¹ But much of the argument tends more to generate heat than to shed light on the author's literary intentions and his vision of the world.

There is no doubt that Ouologuem's book is one of the best-written and most audacious novels that have ever emerged from post-independence Africa; it can even be said to be a shocker to the ‘outward-looking’ literary orthodoxy of pre-independence African writers in French. African readers and critics look at the book with rather unpleasant surprise, while some racially minded literary...