Couchoro, Felix

Félix Couchoro was one of the first Africans to write novels in French, mixing Christian moralism with the plot twists and intrigues of the popular novel. Born in the French colony of Dahomey (now Bénin) to parents of different ethnicities, Couchoro settled in Togo in 1940. L’Esclave (1930), Couchoro’s first novel (and only the third novel written in French by an African) earned the author a reputation as an apologist for both Christian mission and French colonialism.

He became a nationalist and found himself both jailed and exiled for this activity. He produced dozens of other novels (mostly published in serial form in a Togolese newspaper), but only L’Esclave remains accessible and fairly well known (reissued in 1983). For a reader expecting Catholic proselytizing and an apologia for colonialism, L’Esclavemay be surprising: it preaches conformity and conversion less than internal moral values. The text makes almost no mention of colony or church until the end. Instead, Couchoro...