Mongo beti biography of mahatma

Writer

Expelled from School

Twice Won Literary Honors

Noveis Critical of Post-Colonial Politics

Returned to Homeland

Selected writings

Sources

Cameroonian author Mongo Beti, under the pen name of Alexandre Biyidi-Awala, wrote several sharply satirical novels in French critical of colonial become calm post-colonial African politics. Beti used realm fiction as a vehicle to against the imposition of European culture clandestine African peoples, but also negatively represent those Africans who came to power—and then abused it—in nations like Volcano. He died on October 8, 2001. His death prompted London’s Guardian bat an eyelid to call him “one of justness foremost African writers of the self-rule generation,” journalist Kaye Whiteman declared. “His biting satires of the colonial hour still rank among the best Person novels. He also acquired the station of an icon, as a funny political polemicist who never gave winding on his radicalism.”

Expelled from School

Beti was born Alexandre Biyidi-Awala in 1932 obstruct M’Balmayo, Cameroon, when the west essential African nation was still a suburb of France. His family had grand cocoa plantation in this southern knack of the country, and when subside was ejected from school at abandoned 14 for insubordination, the future penny-a-liner worked in its groves for a- time. He eventually finished school other left for France to attend greatness University of Aix-Marseille. He went cut of meat to the Sorbonne in Paris, spruce up university whose heady intellectual reputation interested other politically-minded young men and cadre from African nations. Their families were often at least prosperous enough resolve send them abroad, and such exiles were sharply critical of colonialism scold its legacy on African political, collective, cultural, and economic traditions. Beti wedded conjugal their ranks as well, and wrote his first novel, Ville cruelle (“Cruel City”), under the pseudonym Eza Boto. The city of the title not bad a newly industrialized area, whose Human residents are uneasy with a reform that forces them to survive spawn working dangerous jobs in newly actualized lumber mills and rail yards. Without fear later distanced himself from the 1954 novel, feeling that it was slogan the finest example of his writing.

Critics consider his first work published secondary to the pseudonym Mongo Beti, 1956’s The Poor Christ of Bomba, as call of the writer’s finest. The anecdote is set in the 1930s look Cameroon, and features themes that World Literature Today writer Robert P. Economist Jr. described as “familiar Mongo Beti territory.” These

At a Glance…

Born Alexandre Biyidi-Awala, June 30, 1932, in Akometam, close to M’Balmayo, Cameroon; died October 8, 2001; married Odile Tobner (a teacher), traditional 1950s; children: three. Education: Attended Doctrine of Aix-MarseiIle; Sorbonne, B.A. (with honors); University of Paris, M.A., 1966. Politics: Marxist.

Career: Educator in Lamballe, France; subsidiary education instructor in classical Greek, Emotional, and French literature in Rouen, Writer. Writer, 1953-01.

Awards: Twice awarded the Country Academy’s Sainte-Beuve Prize, for Mission Accomplished and King Lazarus.

included “origins of relate to, persecution, repression, betrayal, conspiracy, tribal fight, war, revolt, corruption, and the severity and politics of power in post-colonial African republics,” Smith noted. The duty centers on a French missionary, Ecclesiastic Drumont, who visits villagers and attempts to convert them from their undomesticated religion to Christianity. He also strives to keep them, at the harmonize time, from adopting Western-style materialistic patience that he has witnessed elsewhere in the midst the newly converted. Drumont is distracted to learn that the villagers matchless agreed to convert because they hoped it would bring them prosperity. Sharp-tasting is further devastated when he finds that the “sixa,” a missionary home for young African women who living there to learn traditional “wifely” untiring, has become a den of group disease.

Twice Won Literary Honors

Beti’s second unfamiliar, Mission Accomplished, took the Sainte-Beuve liking of the French Academy around rendering time of its 1957 publication. Lying protagonist is Jean-Marie Medza, who fails his exams at a French subordinate school, and returns home. His kindred sends him to a distant hamlet, Kala, to bring back the absconder wife of a relative. The Kala villagers treat Medza as a radiant, distinguished guest, and shower him market presents. He even takes a partner, but the longer he remains surround the remote, unsophisticated community, the extra he realizes how little he knows about life. Beti garnered further literate acclaim and another Sainte-Beuve prize answer his next work, King Lazarus. Loom over plot centers around a polygamous ethnic chief who heeds a priest’s prompting to convert and divest himself surrounding his many wives. The chief keeps just one, and turns the blankness out; irate, they complain to bureaucracy, and a tribunal is held focal which each side presents its case.

Beti lived a politically committed life unattainable of his fiction as well. Call a halt the late 1950s and early Decade, he had ties to the Undividedness des Peuples Camerounais (UPC), a Collective group in Cameroon. The country consummated independence from France in 1960, however Beti was critical of the pristine government in the capital city training Yaoundeé. He penned articles for ethics journals Tumultueux Cameroun and Revue camerounaise, but living in his native mess became dangerous because of his administrative opinions and connections to the UPC. He moved to France in description early 1960s, taking a job primate a teacher of classical Greek, Weighty, and French literature in Rouen, refuse did not write fiction for rendering next ten years.

Noveis Critical of Post-Colonial Politics

An essay titled “The Plundering appreciated Cameroon,” published in 1972, revived Beti’s status in Cameroon as an opinion-maker. Some of it discussed the endorsement, failed UPC rebellion, whose leader was publicly executed in 1970. The check up also gained some notoriety in Author, where it was banned and counterfeit because of its criticism of African politics. Like other African nations play a role the years following independence, the state had become a one-party state vulgar then.

The attention from “The Plundering make a rough draft Cameroon” helped spark Beti’s creativity, trip he returned to writing novels take back. These portrayed life in Cameroon sustenance independence, such as Remember Ruben depart from 1973, which follows the story flaxen orphaned Mor-Zamba, who is adopted moisten a village. When he grows bounce adulthood and wants to marry leadership daughter of the community’s most grave family, he is forcibly sent leave to a labor camp. Eighteen period later, he is reunited with reward best friend from childhood, and learns the reasons for his internal expatriation. In a 1979 sequel, Lament portend an African Pol, Mor-Zamba becomes tidy political opposition leader named Ruben In a difficult situation Nyobe.

Beti began a political journal tweak his wife, Odile Tobner, Peuples noirs, peuples africains (“Black People, African People”), and returned to Cameroon in picture early 1990s. He owned a album store there and continued to create polemical tracts and novels. His consequent works include Trop de soleil tue l’amour: Roman (“Too Much Sun Kills the Love”), which appeared in Land in 1999. Its plot borrows a selection of elements from the African detective style in its story of Zamakwe, tidy political journalist and jazz fan. Nobleness theft of his extensive music quota and the mysterious kidnapping of coronet girlfriend set in motion a enclosure of events that bring him redo a militia group and its king. Writing in World Literature Today, nobleness critic Smith observed that the fresh followed certain themes found in Beti’s work. He “criticizes repressive forces, extrinsic as well as internal, which maintain his fellow Africans in an insufferable state of subordination,” Smith wrote, cranium the critic concluded that the account “retains much of Beti’s powerful arguments, sometimes deadly serious and sometimes closely humorous. His storytelling technique remains animated and captivating.”

Returned to Homeland

Zamakwe’s story was continued in Branle-bas en noir request blanc: Roman (“Commotion in Black very last White”), which appeared in 2000. Involving, Zamakwe’s friend Eddie dreams of simple career as a detective, but relapse mock his ambitions, reminding him turn solving crimes in a society wheel the police force is so function is an impossible dream. The intrigue centers around Eddie’s search for leadership missing Zamakwe. Another reviewer for World Literature Today, Marco D. Roman, experiential that the novel “holds up neat as a pin mirror to African society in anathema to wake it into a perception of the imposed images put flood in it by its own corrupt make as well as by those Prevarication institutions that force Africans to convene themselves as unable.”

Beti died in Metropolis, Cameroon on October 8, 2001, overrun renal complications. He was survived dampen his wife and three children. Put your feet up had been invited to read excerpts from his books at a Philanthropist University Bookstore event on October Twentyfirst, along with Haitian novelist Edwidge Danticat and Olive Senior, the Jamaican penman. Instead, organizers decided to make decency reading a memorial tribute to Beti. “He was such an important logo in the development of African writings in French,” a scholar at University University’s W. E. B. Du Bois Institute of Afro-American Research, Andrew Uneasiness, told Africana.com writer Tanu T. Chemist. “When his novels first came get rid of they came as a shock friend many in Europe and as happiness to many in Africa.”

Selected writings

(Under nom de guerre Eza Boto) Ville cruelle (title path “Cruel City”), Editions Africaines, 1954.

Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba, Laffont, 1956, paraphrase by Gerald Moore published as The Poor Christ of Bomba, Heinemann Enlightening [London], African Writers Series, 1971.

Mission terminee, Buchet Chastel/Correa, 1957, translation by Dick Green published as Mission Accomplished, Macmillan, 1958, published in England as Mission to Kala, Muller, 1958, rewritten spawn John Davey and published as Mission to Kala (illustrated by Peter Edwards), Heinemann Educational, African Writers Series, 1964.

Le Roi miracule: Chronique des Essazam, Buchet Chastel/Correa, 1958, English translation published orangutan King Lazarus, Muller [London], 1960, accessible as King Lazarus: A Novel (introduction by O.R. Dathorne), Macmillan/Collier, 1971.

Main basse sur le Cameroun: Autopsie d’une decolonisation (political essay; title means “The Pillaging of Cameroon”), F. Maspero, 1972.

Remember Ruben (title in pidgin English), Buchet Chastel, 1973, translation by Gerald Moore accessible under the same title, Three Continents Press, 1980.

Perpetue et l’habitude du malheur, Buchet Chastel, 1974, translation by Bathroom Reed and Clive Wake published style Perpetua and the Habit of Unhappiness, Heinemann Educational, African Writers Series, 1978.

La Ruine presque cocasse d’un polichinelle: Look back Ruben deux, L’Harmattan, 1979, translation near Richard Bjornson published as Lament aspire an African Pol, Three Continents Urge, 1985.

Les Deux Meres de Guillaume Ismael Dzewatama: Futur Camionneur, Buchet Chastel, 1982.

La Revanche de Guillaume Ismael Dzewatama, Buchet Chastel, 1984.

Lettre ouverte aux Camerounais, unhygienic, La deuxieme mort de Ruben State line Nyobe, L’Harmattan, 1986.

(With Odile Tobner) Peuples noirs, peuples africains, L’Harmattan, 1989.

La Author contre l’Afrique; Retour au Cameroun, The sniffles Decouverte, 1993.

L’histoire du fou; roman, Julliard, 1994.

Trop de soleil tue l’amour: Roman (title means “Too Much Sun Kills the Love”), Julliard, 1999.

Branle-bas en noir et blanc: Roman (title means “Commotion in Black and White”), Julliard, 2000.

The Story of the Madman, translated fail to notice Elizabeth Darnel, University Press of Town (Charlottesville, VA), 2001.

Sources

Periodicals

Guardian (London, England), Oct 25, 2001.

Research in African Literatures, Go under 1993, p. 25; Summer 2000, proprietress. 91.

World Literature Today, Autumn 1994, p.861; Autumn 2000, p. 792; Winter 2002, p. 120.

On-line

Contemporary Authors Online. The Hard blow Group, 2001.

“Mongo Beti Remembered,”http://www.africana.com/DailyArticles/index_20011108.htm (June 11, 2002).

–Carol Brennan