by Ferdinand Oyono

Ferdinand Oyono was born in 1929 in the village of N’Goulemakong, Cameroon, and educated in the town of Yaoundé. After secondary school he studied law and political economy at the Sorbonne and the École Nationale d’Administration in Paris. He pursued a theatrical career in Paris as well, acting in his spare time. His mind on Cameroon, in 1956 Oyono wrote and published his first two novels Une Vie de Boy (Houseboy) and Le Vieux Négre et la médaille (The Old Man and the Medal)—both set in his homeland. In anticipation of Cameroon’s gaining independence in 1960, Oyono returned home in 1959 to join the diplomatic service. He would be posted as ambassador to France, Liberia, and the United States. Meanwhile, this final decade of colonial rule saw a new body of literature emerge in French West Africa. Shaping this literature were Africans such...