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Houseboy
Ferdinand Oyono
Novel, 1956. Translated from French by John Reed
A young servant's diary in colonial Cameroon exposes the brutality and hypocrisy of French rule and the mission-church world.
Books set in Cameroon
Five books by writers from Cameroon, set there, that give a real sense of the place, starting with Houseboy and Mission to Kala.
About the literature of Cameroon
Cameroon's best-known novels date from the colonial era, when Ferdinand Oyono and Mongo Beti wrote sharp satires of French rule and the mission church. Both wrote in French, one of Cameroon's two official languages alongside English, a legacy of the territory's division between France and Britain after the First World War. Chiefs, missionaries and colonial administrators recur throughout their fiction.
Oyono's Houseboy is the diary of a young servant in colonial Cameroon, and his The Old Man and the Medal is a comic tale of a village elder honoured by the French administration. Beti's Mission to Kala sends a young student to a remote Beti village, and Patrice Nganang's Dog Days, set in 1990s Yaoundé, sees everyday poverty through a stray dog's eyes.
By writers from Cameroon
Mission to Kala
Mongo Beti
Novel, 1957. Translated from French by Peter Green
A young student is sent to a remote Cameroonian village and finds rural Beti family life, customs and colonial-era tensions.
The Old Man and the Medal
Ferdinand Oyono
Novel, 1956. Translated from French by John Reed
A comic, sharp tale of a village elder honoured by the colonial administration, showing land, church and French authority in rural Cameroon.
Dog Days
Patrice Nganang
Novel, 2001. Translated from French by Amy Baram Reid
A stray dog's-eye view of everyday life, poverty and social hierarchy in 1990s Yaoundé.
King Lazarus
Mongo Beti
Novel, 1958. Translated from French
A satire of a chief's conversion and the clash between traditional authority, missionaries and colonial administrators in Beti country.
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