One country, one author: in Chad with Nétonon Noël Ndjékéry

Audio 29:00

Chadian writer Nétonon Noël Ndjékéry in the studio at RFI (June 2019). © RFI / Fanny Renard

By: Catherine Fruchon-Toussaint

Nétonon Noël Ndjékéry was born in Moundou, Chad. His author career began with a first short story published by Radio France Internationale. Since then, he has lived on the shores of Lake Geneva, in Switzerland.

Publicity

In his writings, Nétonon Noël Ndjékéry flirts as much with the short story, the theater as with the novel. To date, he is the author of three novels: Sang de kola (1999, Harmattan), Chroniques tchadiennes (2008, In Folio) and Mosso (2011, In Folio). In 2014, he published a collection of short stories La minute mongole, published by La Cheminante. In 2017, he received the Grand Prix Littéraire National du Tchad for all of his work.

His new novel entitled Au Petit Bonheur la Brousse has just been published by Swiss editions Helice Helas.

(Replay of July 5, 2019)

Cover of Nétonon Noël Ndjékéry's new novel © Helice Helas

"At the crossroads of idioms and accents, between Switzerland and its ideal of whiteness and order, and Chad marked by the arbitrariness of a postcolonial history" badly tamed ", Neton Christmas Ndjékéry narrates the adventures of Bendiman, a Chadian child who grew up in Geneva and fed on the mythologies of the good little Helvetians : Guillaume Tell, the Motherland, the Red Cross, etc. One evening, his father was called back to Chad with the whole family. N'Djaména airport, a black car takes his parents and picked up by an uncle, he investigates to find that his father and mother are locked up for " Raison d'Etat".

Bendiman then begins a quest to get his parents out of prison in a country he finally does not know, in a civil war, tumbled by a massive influx of petrodollars, where the law has never really left the books to enter in people's daily lives.

Ndjékéry delivers a picaresque story, full of flavor between the Swiss and the orality of the griots. Halfway between the tale and the initiation tale, Bendiman is the hero in spite of himself of an overlap between languages ​​and moral imaginaries. " (Presentation of the editor)

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