Reviews for King of Kahel

The average rating for King of Kahel based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-07-17 00:00:00 Kathleen Baker Biographie romancée d'un aventurier ayant réellement existé, Olivier de Sanderval, qui fut maire en France puis roi en pays Peul. Un personnage pittoresque comme l'atteste son parcours et auquel l'auteur, Tierno Monenembo donne une personnalité absolument excentrique, mais qui incarne également la vision des colonisateurs français "progressistes" du XIXe siècle comme Jules Ferry. Ses aventures au Fouta Djalon nous donnent un aperçu du fonctionnement de la société peule à cette époque, tandis que ses démêlées avec l'administration française dressent un tableau assez juste du fonctionnement de la Troisième République. Petit bémol : si l'histoire est prenante, le style ne m'a pas séduite plus que ça. Bref, contente d'avoir élargi mes horizons en lecture francophone au delà de la France. J'ajouterai sans doute Peuls du même auteur à ma liste de livres à lire.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-02-14 00:00:00 Gerarda Garcia The King of Kahel is my book from Guinea for the Read The World challenge. It is the first book printed by AmazonCrossing, Amazon's own publishing imprint specialising in translated literature. They say 'AmazonCrossing uses customer feedback and other data from Amazon sites to identify exceptional works that deserve a wider, global audience.' So this book was presumably picked up because it was a big hit in French. It's rather unusual among all the post-colonial literature I've read for the Read The World challenge, because the hero is a European colonialist. Specifically, it's about Olivier de Sanderval, a real person, a man from a wealthy family of provincial French industrialists who did some exploring in what is now Guinea and wanted to set himself up as an African king. And he's not just the hero in the narrow sense of being the central character; it is very much his story and he is presented as a sympathetic character. It's always interesting to have your expectations confounded, if only because it reveals what those expectations are. Because there's nothing terribly radical about this novel. If it had been written by a white French novelist I wouldn't have thought anything of it; Monénembo has lived in France for nearly 40 years; and yet I was in fact surprised. That aside, this is an enjoyable if unexceptional literary novel. It is light and cheery in tone; the back cover claims that 'Monénembo has created nothing short of a jovial Heart of Darkness', which is about as baffling a description as I've ever encountered. The book reads to me like a playful re-imagining of history, so I assumed it was only based lightly on the historical Sanderval. Apparently, though, Monénembo did a lot of research and had access to the Sanderval family archives, so there may be more history in it than I realised… perhaps if I'd realised that I would have enjoyed it more. Or maybe I'd rather have read a straight biography. As an example the book being unexpectedly accurate, Google found me this: a real coin produced by the real Olivier de Sanderval to serve as currency for his kingdom of Kahel. The Arabic script reads 'Sanderval'. Which is sort of amazing, actually.