Into Africa

Getting to know Le Clezio is to get in touch with long musical sentences

Getting to know Le Clezio is to get in touch with long musical sentences
It is 1948. A young boy with the Irish name of Fintan is travelling from France, in a Dutch ship, accompanied by his Italian mother, to meet his English father for the first time 8212; in Africa. Geoffroy Allen and Marie-Louise, known as Maou, had met in Nice in 1935, before the outbreak of the war. Their relationship endured despite Geoffroy8217;s move to work in an English company in Africa and to follow his quest for the black queen of the Meroe who led her people across the desert to a new land. Meanwhile, Maou and her family, Italians living in France, retreated to a ghetto in the hills. Now, years later, they will meet again as family.

The war ended some years ago, but its memories remain raw and painful, and their world has changed irrevocably. Yet, in other parts of the world, change is slower in coming. The first part of the novel describes the journey. Mother and son occupy an in-between position: not part of the English officers and their primly dressed wives in first class, but also not part of the mass of black Africans in the cargo hold who pay their way by endlessly hammering the rust out of the foredeck. On board are the kind of men for whom Africa represents different opportunities: Simpson, the disdainful colonial officer; Florizel, the mercenary; Heylings, the first mate, a seaman.

Life in Onitsha is nothing like what Maou has imagined: no magic, no mystery and little humanity. It is just a small and small-minded colonial town where the English sip their drinks and chatter nonchalantly over dinner while black convicts, bound by chains on their ankles, dig a swimming pool for them. Maou, with her instinct for justice, is out of place here. The customs of this fiercely hierarchical little colonial world are more alien to her than the practices of the local Africans. Her husband8217;s business suffers as a result, and he loses his position. They are forced to leave Africa, but other tragedies precede their departure.

Onitsha, published in 1991, is Jean-Marie Gustave Le Cleacute;zio8217;s semi-autobiographical novel based on his childhood experience of colonial black Africa. His father, a Mauritian doctor with English citizenship, worked for the British Army and, after a gap during the war, moved the family to Nigeria when Jean-Marie was a child. The move sparked an enduring interest in the world and, like Fintan, Jean-Marie began writing a novel during the journey. Awarding him the Nobel Prize this year, the Swedish Academy called Le Cleacute;zio the 8220;author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilisation8221; and 8220;an ecologically engaged author8221;. And the vivid, throbbing prose of Onitsha, evocatively translated by Alison Anderson, exemplifies this: the deep commitment to the earth, the long musical sentences, the rich descriptions of life in all its forms 8212; at sea, on land, in the desert, in the pages of legends and history, and even in dreams. Find the birds 8220;shining like pewter8221;, the 8220;flying ibises still lit by the sun8221; as they are chased by stormclouds and the termite castles 8220;like towers of baked earth8221;.