Houseboy     by Ferdinand Oyono, Translated by John Reed Original title: Une VIE DE BOY Original language: French Published by Heinemann Pub. Date: 1990 Format: Textbook Binding Dimensions: (in inches): 0.33 x 7.79 x 5.07 ISBN: 0435905325 Edition: REISSUE List Price: $11.95, £5.70 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £5.70 Buy online from Amazon.com for $11.95 Published by Heinemann Pub. Date: 1966 Pub. Place: UK Format: 140 pages List Price: £4.99 Not available for ordering

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A delicious but ultimately serious-minded satire on French colonial rule in Africa by a leading Cameroonian writer. The famous quotation ‘No man is a hero to his valet’ applies rigorously here as the narrator who, working on the principle that ‘The dog of the King is the King of the dogs’, strives and temporarily succeeds in becoming the Chief European’s ‘boy’.


Via a series of telling episodes involving disgraceful missionaries, pathetic planters and brutal officials, the previously successful Houseboy is driven to a desperate end by an unexploded bomb of female passion (and boredom) who arrives from Europe to become the Chief European’s bride.


One of the pleasures of this little book is Oyono’s liberal use of pithy African proverbs and turns of phrase, as when the doctor’s wife, previously the belle of the local Europeans’ ball ‘looks as flat as putty flung against the wall’ in comparison with the fresh young thing newly arrived from the Metropole. Also fascinating is the telling of the ‘village African’ side of the story on the (late) colonial period, which gives Europeans the possibility to begin to grasp the strange coexistence of peoples, traditions and individuals colonial rule involved.

‘Two days later Father Gilbert took me on his motor-cycle. We spread panic through the villages by the noise we made. His tour had lasted a fortnight and now we were on our way back to the Saint Peter’s Catholic Mission at Dangan. I was happy. The speed intoxicated me. I was going to learn about the city and white men and live like them. I caught myself thinking I was like one of the wild parrots we used to attract to the village with grains of maize. They were captured through their greediness. My mother often used to say, laughing, «Toundi, what will your greediness bring you to...?»’ p13-14