After the death of a literary giant in Africa, why could I find no copies of his book?

After reading about the death of the Senegalese writer Cheikh Hamidou Kane this week, I went on a mission to find his most famous book.

Described as a master of the pan-African novel and a literary giant, the 98-year-old received obituaries internationally, and in both French- and English-language African media. Le Monde called him “iconic”. His 1961 book L’Aventure Ambiguë (Ambiguous Adventure) has been studied in numerous universities and schools across the continent and is said to be one of the best books by an African writer to capture the post-colonial struggle for identity in newly independent countries.

I could find one copy online for £75 but beyond that it was absent. Not even a copy in French, his language of writing, nor in any of the other 40 languages into which it has been translated.

It was not listed in my library nor in the real-life large bookshop I went into. So sorry, I can’t recommend it here in our “what we’re reading section”. And maybe, if you are reading this in the UK or the US, you won’t have read it either. It did make me think about the impact of the terrible homogeneity of a lot of our culture in Britain – how our narratives contain and define us, and the lack of diversity restricts us. The US has exported so much – books, films and TV – straight across the Atlantic and we’ve sent a fair bit their way but this alliance has left us a bit cheated.

With the exception of a few breakthrough authors, most of whom live in the west, there seems to be so little mainstream acceptance of culture and ideas from the world’s most important continent, in terms of its youth demographic, to the northern hemisphere. Even on a plane to east Africa a few weeks ago, the in-flight entertainment had nothing on offer that had been made by the continent’s film-makers. If the work of the global majority is mostly sealed off, then it is to the detriment of everyone.

But it does strengthen my belief in why what we do here in Global development is important in its own small way. Reporting the stories of people from far-flung places and cultures through their own words is so essential when two hemispheres are so sadly sealed off from each other.
Tracy McVeigh, editor, Global development

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