"The Strange Destiny of Wangrin" or the ruses of an African interpreter, by Amadou Hampâté Bâ

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By: Tirthankar Chanda Follow

A great defender of the African oral tradition, known for his Memories that have become bestsellers, the Malian Amadou Hampâté Bâ is also the author of a remarkable novel. "The Strange Destiny of Wangrin" recounts the contradictions of West African colonial society through the adventures of an ambitious and cunning interpreter who challenges the power of the French administration to rise to the summit of power and fortune . Located at the crossroads of ethnological document and modern fiction, this story touches the contemporary reader by the tension between the exercise of free will and the problem of predestination which is at the heart of its intrigue.

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The Strange Destiny of Wangrin by Amadou Hampaté Bâ is an unclassifiable book where it is about griot, tutelary gods, fetishes, but which remains eminently contemporary because the problem of freedom which is at the heart of this novel goes beyond the local to marry the global. The reader identifies with the hero and his personal quest in the very constrained world of colonization where the action takes place.

Located at the crossroads of ethnographic narrative and bourgeois novel, this book tackles through the story of an exceptional life a plurality of themes: tension between modernity and tradition, power relations in colonial Africa, but also the issue of issues of writing in an oral society. Published in 1973 and crowned by the Literary Grand Prize of Black Africa, Wangrin's Strange Destiny is above all the work of an outstanding storyteller.

"The sage of Bandiagara"

The one who had been nicknamed "the sage of Bandiagara" had made the safeguarding of the riches of traditional Africa a global emergency by hammering out his formula quoted everywhere: "  In Africa, when an old man dies, it is a library who burned   . "

Hampaté Bâ's interest in oral traditions is linked to its origins. The man was born in 1901 in Bandiagara, in the Dogon country of Mali, conquered by France at the end of the 19th century. In addition to primary and secondary studies at the French school, in particular what was called the hostage school, the young Amadou had received solid traditional training. As an adult, he devoted a large part of his life to collecting the oral and spiritual traditions of his country within the framework of the French Institute of Black Africa in Dakar, founded by Théoodore Monod and which Amadou Hampaté Ba joined in the 1940s. A pioneer in collecting, he also published poetry, historical essays and initiatory tales inspired by the Peul tradition. He was a born storyteller, as evidenced by his books of Memoirs which really made him known to the general public. The Strange Destiny of Wangrin which is the fictionalized biography of a colonial interpreter, shares with the Memoirs the liveliness and modernity of your tone, even if the universe that these books stage stems from a bygone era.

The gods of the bush

The action of the novel takes place in French West Africa under colonization, in the first decades of the last century. This universe with its strict rules and practices is described through the eyes and tribulations of the main character, Wangrin, who was the interpreter of several circle commanders in the region of present-day Burkina Faso.

Within the administrative circle, the interpreter was certainly the most powerful man after the commander, but let us not forget that Wangrin is African. He must make his way through a society dominated by whites, who are the true gods of the bush then. To avoid being crushed by his superiors or his competitors, he can only count on his intelligence. To achieve his ambitions, he must be cunning with the rules, abusing the naivety of the commanders and ... of his own powers which he derives from his very status as mediator between colonizers and colonized.

The novel tells how by dint of tricks, tenacity, cunning, its protagonist manages to rise to the summit of power and fortune. "Les roueries d'un interprète africaine" is the programmatic subtitle of the book. We are in the mood for a picaresque tale where the fox must trick the lions so as not to be marginalized, but the trick does not always work. Sometimes lions get angry…

In short, it is a story of rise and fall. The fall will be all the more dizzying as the protagonist who is the product of traditional society believes in the evil powers of supernatural forces. He provoked them by transgressing the ritual prohibitions in a moment of madness. The punishment will be terrible. There is in this novel Figaro, Sgnarelle, but also something of African initiatory tales and Greek tragedy.

Three reasons to read or re-read The Strange Destiny of Wangrin

First, you have to read or reread this book to hear the effervescence and verve of Amadou Hampâté Bâ's narration ringing in your ear. The author brilliantly combines analysis and social criticism with the resources of traditional African orality, ranging from legends and myths to sacred songs, through proverbs, riddles and fables.

Second reason, we will also read this book for its description of the interior of the hidden springs of colonial society, its organization, its injustices, but also its fragility and its paradoxes. Wangrin's rise is proof that despite the tension which characterizes the relations between the colonizer and the colonized, the latter had the possibility of modifying the game, by dint of courage and exceptional intelligence, and of rethinking his place within of the seemingly unchanging colonial hierarchy.

Finally, it is a skillfully constructed book, all in the play of mirrors between orality and writing, between tradition and modernity, between the character and his narrator who is also in a certain way his double and his successor spiritual. These games make reading this novel particularly enjoyable and its hero Wangrin, in search of his destiny, our contemporary.

The Strange Destiny of Wangrin by Amadou Hampâté Bâ is to be read in the pocket collection of the 10/18 editions

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