Bound to Violence by Yambo Ouologuem

Bound to Violence by Yambo Ouologuem

‘A great novel ... bone-chilling black satire … it deserves many readings’ New York Times

A mock epic of explosive power, Bound to Violence races through the history of the imaginary African kingdom of Nakem, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Recounting the bloody adventures of successive inglorious dynasties, the arrival of white exploiters and the fates of ordinary, endlessly persecuted citizens – most notably the tragicomic, Paris-educated hero Raymond-Spartacus Kassoumi – this iconoclastic, outrageous 1968 novel takes a wry, sideways look at empire and nationalism, and at the sex, violence and power that run through human relationships.

‘A startling energy of language’ John Updike, New Yorker

Translated by Ralph Manheim
With an Introduction by Chérif Keïta

Ouologuem delineates white savagery as precisely as he shows intrablack conflicts.. His novel is something like a skyscraper. It has multi-levels, a variety of actions, characters, and scenes... A bone-chilling black satire * New York Times *
Conveys, through Ralph Manheim's translation, a startling energy of language.... The intelligence expressed by the book seems all too withering, all too Gallic -- John Updike * The New Yorker *

Yambo Ouologuem (Author)
Yambo Ouologuem was a Malian writer born into an aristocratic family. His poetry has been anthologized in Poems of Black Africa, edited by Wole Soyinka, and The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry, edited by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier. Met with critical acclaim in France, Ouologuem won the Renaudot Prize for his debut novel, Bound to Violence. He died in 2017.

Ralph Manheim (Translator)
Ralph Manheim was a Jewish-American translator of German and French literature. He translated the works of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Günter Grass, Peter Handke, Martin Heidegger and Hermann Hesse, among others. Manheim received the 1964 PEN Translation Prize, the 1970 National Book Award in the Translation category and a 1983 MacArthur Fellowship in Literary Studies. He won the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, a major lifetime achievement award in the field of translation, in 1988. He died in 1992.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780241680803
ISBN 10	0241680808
Title	Bound to Violence
Author	Yambo Ouologuem
Series	Penguin Modern Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Penguin Books Ltd
Year published	2024-03-07
Number of pages	240
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.