-
- This book is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- Online publication date:
- July 2017
- Print publication year:
- 2011
- Online ISBN:
- 9781781387825
12th August 2024: digital purchasing is currently unavailable on Cambridge Core. Due to recent technical disruption affecting our publishing operation, we are experiencing some delays to publication. We are working hard to restore services as soon as possible and apologise for the inconvenience. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
The Noir Atlantic follows the influence of African American author Chester Himes on Francophone African crime fiction. In 1953, Himes emigrated to Paris; he struggled there, just as he had in the United States. In 1957, his luck changed: the famous French Série noire brought out the first installment of his “Harlem” crime series, La reine des pommes. Suddenly, he was a household name in France. Later, he would also have a significant influence on Francophone African writers; for them, Himes’s blend of absurdist humor and violence offered an alternative to a high literary paradigm implanted during the colonial era. Likewise, his heterogeneous identity as American, black, and a writer of “French” bestsellers modeled an escape from the centripetal pull of the Métropole. Starting with Abasse Ndione’s depictions of Senegal’s marijuana-smoking subculture in La Vie en spirale (1982) and ending with Mongo Beti’s 2001 Branle-bas en noir et blanc, set in Yaoundé, Cameroon, Francophone African crime fiction rejected French criteria of literary success; it embraced a new postcolonial aesthetic that emphasized entertaining the reader while making a living. The Noir Atlantic demonstrates why turning to what this study calls a “frivolous literary” mode represented a profound shift in perspective that anticipated more recent developments such as littérature monde.
* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.
Usage data cannot currently be displayed.