The obsessions of Théo Ananissoh
Audio 03:51
Théo Ananissoh is the author of “Perdre le corps”, his seventh novel, published in January 2021. © C. Hélie, Gallimard.
By: Tirthankar Chanda Follow
10 mins
"We tend to always write the same thing because we write with our obsessions", likes to say Theo Ananissoh.
"Return to the native country", "socio-political drifts in post-independence Africa", "condition of women", "landscape and history", are some of the obsessions around which this writer of Togolese origin has built his work, noticed by critics from his first novels in the 1990s. Today, rich in seven novels, collections of short stories and essays, this corpus stands out for its controlled and complex narrative economy, as evidenced by the seventh and new opus from the writer: “Losing the body”, a fable on the universal theme of gift and transmission.
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“
There is a man who is sick, who comes back and chooses like that by chance a young person from his home to whom he wants to transmit, so he makes him experience what he wishes to transmit to him.
The young person is himself transformed.
A saying from northern Togo says that the good guys know or recognize each other: the two recognized each other.
These words are those of the novelist Théo Ananissoh.
His new novel, whose action he has just summarized in broad strokes, is one of the major titles of this year's winter literary return.
Losing the Body
is the seventh novel from the pen of this Togolese-born novelist.
A tale that is both optimistic and desperate, reaching the universal through its vision of the world full of empathy but not devoid of insight into the complexities of the human soul.
Since his first story,
Territoires du Nord
, published in 1992, the novelist has built from book to book an introverted universe, rich in nostalgic resonances, against a background of socio-political dynamics with uncertain outcomes.
Losing the body is
no exception to the rule.
This novel reads like a tale, a fable of friendship, confidence and self-sacrifice in a contemporary world where everything is sluggishness, brutality and shenanigans.
Between Faust and Cyrano de Bergerac
The action of this novel takes place in contemporary Togo.
Returning to his native country after making his fortune in Switzerland, the protagonist Jean Adodo offers a young real estate agent who came to canvass him a singular mission.
He asks him to court his girlfriend for a substantial annuity.
The young man willingly lends himself to this game, especially as the woman in question is beautiful and desirable.
But he can't help but wonder about the hidden intention of his wealthy interlocutor.
This novel, which begins as a thriller, brings to mind Faust and his pact with the Devil, but here we are closer to Cyrano de Bergerac.
The art of the author of these pages consists in drawing in the interstices of his account of unusual transactions a utopian quest for love and transmission, with the sunny beaches of Togo and the savannas described in the background. with great ecological sensitivity.
The fascination for the landscape which characterizes the work of Théo Ananissoh is partly linked to the status of exile of its author and his concern to take his native country head-on.
Oscillating between history and autofiction, the intrigues of his novels take place for the most part in Togo, a way undoubtedly for the author to exorcise the nostalgia of exile.
Diasporization of the world
Born in 1962 to Togolese parents, the young Ananissoh grew up in the Central African Republic before returning to Togo at the age of 12, with his family, fleeing the repression of the Bokassa militias.
The future novelist was 24 when he flew to Paris to pursue literature studies.
He has lived and worked in Germany since the mid-1990s. A life of wandering coupled with the awareness of the diasporization of the world, which has profoundly influenced the literary work of the novelist, as he explains himself: "
I am part of this diaspora.
I've been in the rest of the world for 34 years, making the round trip between Europe and Africa, Togo.
And indeed, quite naturally, often when I write, I deal with this subject: the characters come back.
It is part of the African reality today: the African continent is also elsewhere now
.
"
The return to the native country is a postcolonial theme par excellence.
Théo Ananissoh has renewed the
topos
by centering his novelist's gaze on the Africa of independence and its excesses which constitute the basic framework of his main novels.
These are titled
Lisahoé
(2005),
Un reptile per capita
(2007),
Delikatessen
(2018).
Halfway between fables and stories, between thrillers and investigations, these novels with sophisticated narration explore the lives of men and women under authoritarian regimes.
The novelist tells, without taking sides, but lets shine through the voices of the narrator-characters, often self-fictional, the aspiration for an organized and sensible society, making possible a life of spirit and civilized relations between citizens.
“
People don't know they have to create a world too,
” laments the narrator of
Ténèbres à midi
, echoing the Indo-British writer VS Naipaul, of whom Ananissoh has been a frequent reader.
He continues to be inspired by the masterful work of the author of the unforgettable
À la curve du rivière
, whose uncompromising critiques of regimes and men mixing politics, anthropology and history, against a backdrop of meticulously crafted narrative tension, constitute an unsurpassed and unsurpassable model of lucidity.
“
There are writers who serve as a buoy, works that carry you, that support you in a way.
You think this is for you.
VS Naipaul was an author like that for me that I constantly read,
who has a story of its own close to mine, to my world, he
explains.
He is the only writer of what was once called the "third world" who offers a vision of the world, a big vision, quite complete in my opinion, quite strong, quite broad.
"
Naipaul, but also André Gide, Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse, Mongo Beti, are some of Théo Ananissoh's masters in literature.
In keeping with the humanist vein of his models, the author of
Perdre le corps
has built a work that is both personal and universal, shaped by the double concern of ethics and aesthetics, breaking with "
verbal pleasure
" which has long characterized the African Francophonie.
His original approach, coupled with a great finesse of thought, is the secret of the growing fascination exerted by this novelist like no other.
Perdre le corps
, by Théo Ananissoh,
“Black Continents” Collection, Gallimard, 269 pages, 20 euros.
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