By Tirthankar ChandaPosted on 30-11-2019Modified on 30-11-2019 at 23:28
Léonard Vincent is a reporter for RFI's Africa service, but he is also a novelist and essayist. Between novel and news, his new book, Men of the Ministry (Anamosa Publishing), explores the theme of power and its universal issues, through characters evolving in a contemporary and resolutely postcolonial African capital. Interview.
RFI: Your book The Men of the Ministry is divided into three parts. Each of these parts can be read as an autonomous narrative, even if they are related to each other by their characters and the atmosphere common to the three stories. So, novel or collection of news?
Léonard Vincent: It is indeed difficult to find a word to describe this book. We even asked the question with my publisher. Let's say novel, because there is a novelistic dimension in the three stories that make up this book, with as protagonists three men who are so many keys to enter the heart of the totalitarian power that I describe: a minister, a civil servant (a protocol officer), and the great almighty leader. All this beautiful world is told through the outside look of a narrator who is my double, a foreign journalist in Africa like me. We can say that it's a novel about power. As for the exploded form of the book, it also relates to the circumstances of his writing. I started when leaving France for Morocco where I was the RFI correspondent, between 2013 and 2014. I wrote the first sentence of the book when I arrived in Morocco and I finished the writing a few days later my return to France, at the end of a Moroccan stay of one year and dust. The book is obviously imbued with the exile I knew.
What was your initial project?
The initial project consisted in answering all the questions that remained unresolved when I wrote my first book The Eritreans (Payot, 2012). It was a journalist's book, which portrayed my meeting with the people of Eritrea, through the traces that these people, who live mostly in diasporas, have left in the world. The task of telling their stories, which I had undertaken, had left me with a taste of unfinished business. It seemed to me that journalistic writing did not succeed in restoring the depth and complexity of the testimonies of my interlocutors, especially since some of them with whom I had remained in contact had become in the meantime friends . I wanted to explore this beyond the limits of journalism which, by dint of taking an interest in the area, in the sequence of causes and effects, can not account for the totality of reality. In my opinion, only literature, or art in general, whose emancipatory gesture makes it possible to apprehend the experience of humanity in all its diversity.
Eritrea is never named in your book, but it is indeed in this country, of which you are undoubtedly one of the best connoisseurs on the place of Paris, that the action of your stories unfolds.
I really like William Faulkner and Jean Giono, two authors who counted for me. They invented what they call their "Imaginary South". There is the imagined Provence of Jean Giono and then this county of Yoknapatawpha, located in the deep South of the United States, invented from scratch, where most of Faulkner's novels take place. I followed in the footsteps of these great writers to tell my imaginary Eritrea. This allowed me to rise above the news or anecdote and address my themes of exile and power in what they have of the universal. By naming the country explicitly, I would probably have missed that goal I wanted to achieve.
Your protagonists are called Omer Hassan, Nebsi, Tobias. In the postcolonial dictatorship you are putting on the scene, these three men are not all in the same boat. Who are they ? What role do they play in the inescapable drift of their country?
These three men from the department are at different levels of responsibility. They are defined by the power they exercise or do not exercise. All three of the movement of resistance for the liberation of their country, they borrow, independence come, different paths that lead them to their destinies. Omer Hassan is appointed minister in the new regime. Nebsi becomes a conscientious civil servant, illustrating himself by his concern to remain an honorable citizen. He is a victim of the system, until he will not let himself go, becoming aware of the absurdity of the regime. As for Tobias, he is the almighty president. He is arrogant, ubiquitous, brutal, driven by ambition and the masquerade of power that makes him believe that he holds in his hands the future of his nation. The paths of the three men will cross and cause them to oppose each other.
The back cover is about the spying story. One has the impression of being more in the universe of Kafka than in that of John Le Carré.
The reference to the spy novel refers rather to the very heavy atmosphere that characterizes these pages. Here, violence is not physical, but psychological and social. My intention was not to stop at the anecdotal to better understand life in all its vital dimension, with its share of mysteries, desires and elusive totality.
Your writing is inventive, rich in finds. It is about " tintinnabulante bracelets ", " a harem of palm trees " or " the majestic fear of death" "A formula that strikes with its accuracy. Would you say that it is this inventiveness that distinguishes journalism from literary writing?
In a way, it's harder to be a good journalist than to be a good writer. Literary writing is simply the alliance of freedom and control. We must dominate his tool, in this case, the French language. French is a marvelous tool, I imagine it as a great harpsichord that I learned to handle by diving headlong into the works of great French-speaking authors: Senghor, Césaire, to name but a few. At the same time, one must also trust one's own inner breath. This is what I did by putting myself under the high patronage of John Coltrane who did not know where he was going. He had big themes in mind and afterwards improvised. He was entering into a sort of trance to find his way. In reality, it is enough to have the tool to be free. One day, moved to tears by the elegance and the magic of his music, the fans asked Maurice Ravel where he drew his inspiration. The master contented himself with replying: "I only learned my trade."
The men of the ministry , by Leonard Vincent. Editions Anamosa, published on October 3, 2019, 269 pages, 22 euros.
On the same subject
"Shiftas", the new novel by Léonard Vincent
"Hope", the romance novel of an Eritrean prisoner
Anger of Eritrea after reviews published by Deutsche Welle
In Eritrea, no official reaction to the Nobel Peace Prize of Abiy Ahmed
comments