Eugène Ebodé: "I write to give readers a pass"
Audio 03:35
The writer Eugène Ebodé.
Francesca Mantovani
By: Tirthankar Chanda Follow
9 min
Eugène Ebodé belongs to the postcolonial generation of African novelists.
This Cameroonian-born author has ten books to his credit, the best-known of which recount the tragedies, fights and abuses of the black world.
Before embarking on writing at the turn of the 2000s, the novelist was a professional footballer in Cameroon.
On the occasion of the upcoming release by Gallimard editions of Ebodé's new novel entitled "Brûlant was the gaze of Picasso", Chemins d'Éwriting paints the portrait of this author whose writing is marked by nostalgia, sarcasm and a je ne sais quoi that makes it eminently readable.
Publicity
"
I am essentially a novelist, a novelist with jubilant writing
".
So speaks Eugène Ebodé, writer from Cameroon, author of nine novels, and a tenth awaiting publication by Gallimard editions.
It is a singular work, characterized by its correctness of tone and a deep empathy for the human race, that this former footballer, recycled as a man of letters, delivers to us.
A titular goalkeeper in the Cameroon national junior team in the 1980s, the man for a time made the hearts of fans of the “Cubs of Cameroon” vibrate.
If his footbalistic adventure stopped along the way, Eugène Ebodé has kept from his passage through collective sport a taste for melee and solidarity, a taste which sometimes leads him to imagine writing as a "
pass to the reader.
".
Desire to write
Landed in France in 1986 to pursue studies in journalism and political science, Eugène Ebodé published his first novels at the turn of the century.
He was 40 years old at the time, but it was since his school years that he was torn by the desire to write.
“
Well, as far as I can remember,
the novelist remembers
, I was in sixth grade, at Lieberman College in Douala, we had a French teacher who was fantastic.
He gave us a taste for literary texts which he read to us with absolute perfection and we were transported.
We called him “Voltaire”.
I can therefore say that it was Voltaire who indicated to me, invited, encouraged, immersed in writing.
"
La Transmission
(2002
)
,
Divine Anger (
2004),
Silikani
(2006) .... The first novels of this Franco-Cameroonian have a strongly autobiographical component.
They tell the story of the author's family in independence Africa.
Ebodé's father was a nurse.
Her mother, a housewife, busy raising her ten children.
Parents placed all their hopes on their children.
Having inherited from his nursing father his obsession with sick bodies that he had to treat and if possible heal, the future writer dreamed of practicing medicine.
He will become a novelist.
“In the end, being a writer means being a bit like a doctor of souls…”, confides the author of
Silikani
.
The mountain to climb
Healing the wounds of souls is what Eugène Ebodé does in his novels with exceptional talent.
His writing models are named after the great Cameroonian author Ferdinand Oyono, Martiniquais Aimé Césaire, and the Russians: Gogol, Dostoyevsky and without forgetting Pushkin, indisputable icon.
He reads and rereads
Eugene Onegin
, the verse novel by the Moscow poet, and nurtures the ambition to complete
Peter the Great's Le Nègre
, the novel that the master did not have time to finish.
“
It's a little presumptuous to say it
, recognizes Ebodé,
but I entrust it to you, it is my dream as a writer to be able to complete what he started so well.
Do I have the talent?
strength ?
You have to be humble in front of the mountain to climb, but I will try.
"
While waiting to measure himself one day in the mountains, man continues his journey of writing through mythologies and the future of the contemporary African world which he has made his obsessive themes. Published on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda,
Magnificent Sovereign
(2014), her sixth novel, paints the portrait of the eponymous heroine, of Tutsi origin, a survivor who must continue to live the rest of her life with the memory of the abominations of which, as a little girl, she was. witness. "I am not ashamed of my life, but there is at the back of my throat an ageless disgust", she had confided to the author.
La Rose dans le bus jaune
(2013), devoted to the journey of the American black woman Rosa Parks, on the occasion of the centenary of this iconic figure of the civil rights movement, is another major work from the pen of this novelist.
The strength of this "
biofiction
" lies in the subtle insights it offers on the inner turmoil and the unshakeable sense of dignity of its protagonist, at the origin of the upheaval of an iniquitous social system.
Again, an extraordinary woman will be at the heart of Eugène Ebodé's new novel, which was due out this fall.
Coronavirus obliges, the publication of
Brûlant was the gaze of Picasso
has been postponed to January 2021. This time again, an extraordinary woman is at the heart of the story of war and renewal that the writer tells.
Why are you writing?
Ten books in twenty years of writing.
Tireless Eugène Ebodé… When we ask him what drives him to confront the challenge of the blank page in this way, the latter quotes Sony Labou Tansi who liked to repeat to whoever wanted to hear it: “
I write and I cry out for him to make man in me!
"
And you, Eugène Ebodé:
"
Me
," says the latter, "
I write to pass on to the readers so that we can be a little more united and a little less lonely ...
"
Obviously, soon to be 60 years old and after ten novels and other various and varied writings, the former goalkeeper of the “Dragon of Douala” is still a bit of a footballer at heart.
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