Contemporary Francophone African writers and the burden of commitment.(Brief article)(Book review)

9780813930961

Contemporary Francophone African writers and the burden of commitment.

Cazenave, Odile M. and Patricia Celerier.

U. of Virginia Press

2011

246 pages

$24.50

Paperback

PQ3980

The volume emerged from five years of collaboration between French scholars Cazenave (Boston U.) and Celerier (Vassar College) both in the US and in Africa. They explain that they translate engagement from the French, where it means political involvement of the intellectual class, a concept that has become passe not only in France but also the rest of Europe and the US. But not in Africa, they find. Working across genres but focusing on the novel, they explore enduring commitments, the practice of memory, new aesthetics, the publishing industry, the Internet, and criticism.

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