Roi de Kahel(le)

Le roi de Kahel is based on biographical sources. The "King of Kahel" was Aime Victor Olivier, who lived from 1840 to 1919 and made five visits to the mountainous Fouta-Djalon region (in what is now Guinea). Olivier had wanted to go to Africa since childhood, to find a country that could take over the civilization that he felt would disappear from northern climes with the coming of a new Ice Age. He was a rare nineteenth-century colonial adventurer who grew to have respect for Africans. In presenting a Frenchman in many ways the opposite of the typical colonialist, Tierno Monenembo has written one of the very few novels by an African told from the point of view of a European. Filled with detailed descriptions and ironic comments on both the Europeans and the Africans, it is an excellent portrait of a moment in the encounter of the two continents.