Ambiguous Adventure

"The celebrated classic by a groundbreaking figure in African literature addresses a critical contemporary issue--the collision of Islamic African values and Western culture Hailed by Chinua Achebe as one of the greatest African novels ever written, this long-unavailable classic tells the tale of young Samba Diallo, a devout pupil in a Koranic religious school in Senegal whose parents send him to Paris to study philosophy. Unknown to Samba, it is his family's desperate attempt to better understand the French colonial forces transforming their traditional way of life. But for Samba, it's an exciting adventure, and once in France he excels at his new studies and is delighted by both the French language and his new "marvelous comprehension and total communion" with the Western world. But Samba's joy soon turns to doubt, as he finds himself torn between the materialistic secularism and isolation of French civilization and the deeper spiritual influences of his homeland. As Samba puts it: "I have become the two." Written in an elegant, lyrical prose, Ambiguous Adventure is a masterful expression of the immigrant experience and the repercussions of colonialism, and a great work of literature about the uneasy relationship between Islamic Africa and the West--a relationship more important today than ever before"--

CHEIKH HAMIDOU KANE was born in 1928 in Mataru, Sen- egal, the son of a local chief. Having started at a Koranic school, he went on to a local French primary school, and eventually was sent off to read philosophy and law at the Sorbonne in Paris. Subsequently, he studied at the Ecole Nationale de la France d’Outre-Mer, which had been founded by the French government to train colonial administrators. During Kane’s years in Paris he wrote a novel based closely on his experience, Ambiguous Adventure, and after his return to Senegal in 1959 he set about getting it published, while also taking a job as a governmental bureaucrat. The novel was published in 1961 to immediate acclaim, and the following year won the Grand Prix Litteraire d’Afrique Noir. Kane meanwhile went on to rise in ministerial positions in the Senegalese government, serving as Director of the Department of Economic Planning and Development, Governor of the Region of Thies, and Commissioner of Planning. He has also worked for UNICEF in Lagos and Abidjan. Kane lives in Dakar.

KATHERINE WOODS, besides being known for her translation of Ambiguous Adventure, is perhaps best known for her 1943 translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince.