Monday, July 7, 2014

CAMARA LAYE (1928 - 1980)



   

Camara Laye from Guinea was one of the early outstanding creative writers in Africa. He is best known for his two superb novels, The African child, and The radiance of the king.  

Remarkably these two superb works were published even before Chinua Achebe's first great novel, Things fall apart. But because Laye was writing in French it took the emergence of English translations of his work for the literary world at large to appreciate his genius.  

The African child revisited Laye's childhood in a stunning, charming manner that critics found lyrical and attractive. His second work, The radiance of the king was considered by some experts to be the best novel ever published by an African.      

"In 1954 when The Radiance of the king was first published (in French) Laye had been living in France for ten years, well aware of the various achievements of the modern European novel".    

Wole Soyinka would inter alia comment on The Radiance: "Despite the mystical effusions at the end (of the novel) the aesthetics of the novel are secular".

Indeed: "It is a remarkably modern achievement (for Laye) to have won critical praise in Paris and respect from the Malinke griots of Guinea"

Still as regards The Radiance of the king with its excellent descriptions and other esoteric aspects: "In a dream Clarence (the protagonist of the novel) is frightened by 'fish women'; somewhere between sirens and manatees...the king is God in Africa rather than an African God".

Camara Laye would later publish two other works: A dream of Africa; and The Guardian of the word. He died in1980 after protracted problems with his health.
- R Mokoena

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