Yambo Ouologuem received the Prix Renaudot in 1968, while he wasworking as a high school teacher in France. In 1969, crownedwith his new prestige, he wrote a ‘letter’ to the French andAfricans in France. Using enthusiastic but often excessivelanguage, the Malian author – who died in 2017 – cast a gloomy,if not pessimistic, and redundant look on Africa. Redundant, inthe sense that it took up a certain number of colonial clichés,and that repetition was reflected in its sense of humour, asunderscored in the following extract:

In his A Black Ghostwriter's Letter toFrance, the author of the controversial Le devoir de violence (‘The Duty ofViolence’) thought he was being humorous to the detriment ofAfricans (or some of them), notably Léopold Sédar Senghor, whowas full of praise for the German ethnologist Léo Frobenius(1873–1938). According to Senghor (‘Les leçons de LéoFrobenius’) it was Frobenius, more than any other, whoilluminated for us, words like ‘emotion’, ‘art’, ‘myth’,‘Eurafrica’. In the fourth and fifth chapters of the sectionentitled ‘La nuit des géants’, we meet the character of FritzShrobenius, a learned buffoon who resembles Léo Frobenius.

Ouologuem criticizes the work of Frobenius and the essentialismof the writers of negritude, thus mocking Senghor at length.Likewise, in Ouologuem's ‘letter’, which was advertised as apamphlet, he repeats outdated perceptions and clichés, whichappear humiliating and racist.