Books in English by writers from Togo are hard to find, so these two are wider picks: books by long-time residents, outsiders who know the place well, folk tales and history with a strong feel for Togo.
Togo's best-known book in English may be Tété-Michel Kpomassie's An African in Greenland, which begins in a Togolese village. Togolese writers work mainly in French, the official language, and very little has been translated. Ewe and Kabiyè are the national languages, and stories, songs and proverbs have long been passed on aloud in these and many other tongues. Gnassingbé Eyadéma ruled from 1967 until his death in 2005, and his long shadow falls across the fiction.
Start with Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote by the Ivorian novelist Ahmadou Kourouma, translated from French and told as the praise-song of a griot, a West African bard, for a dictator modelled on Eyadéma. Kossi Efoui, a Togolese writer in exile in France since the 1990s, sets The Shadow of Things to Come in an unnamed African state, where a young man hides from its tyranny and tells his story.
By long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well, or folk tales, poetry and history with a strong feel for Togo.
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A griot's satirical praise-song for a West African dictator whose rise mirrors Eyadéma's long rule in Togo.
In an unnamed African state, a young man whose parents were taken to the plantation penal colonies hides from the regime and tells his story, in a dark, carnivalesque fable of tyranny and the abuse of language.
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