Ambiguous Adventure, by Cheikh Hamidou Kane

When I reorganized my fiction collection early on in the pandemic, putting my books in order by the author's birth year, I discovered that Cheikh Hamidou Kane was the oldest living author in my collection. I think I must have done the reorganization right around the time I read The Dark Child by Camara Laye because I remember thinking I should read Ambiguous Adventure just after finishing The Dark Child. It took me a year to get around to it. The two authors sit right next to one another on my shelf; both were born in 1928 in villages of what was then French West Africa, Laye three months earlier (if Wikipedia is to be trusted*) in the interior of modern-day Guinea and Cheikh Hamidou in the far northeast of present-day Senegal. But while Laye has been dead for more than 40 years, Cheikh Hamidou is evidently still alive (and well I hope!) in Senegal. 

Besides their age and relative proximity, there are some parallels between the stories in The Dark Child and Ambiguous Adventure – and some interesting contrasts. Both are coming-of-age stories of boys born in villages where they receive their early education before going to modern colonial schools, and eventually to France. The Dark Child is more strictly a memoir an ends before Laye arrives in France, while Ambigious Adventure covers its protagonist's time in France, as well as his return to Africa. But the more interesting difference is their childhood experiences. Laye came of age in a village where traditional African religion was practiced. While he did attend French school, the influence of the colonial authority feels remote in his book. Cheikh Hamidou's protagonist was raised in a strict African-Islamic community, and the tension between the local traditional education and what is being offered by the colonial schools is the first example of the fundamental tension that runs through the whole book. When the protagonist begins his studies at the French school and particularly after he leaves for France, he begins to feel cut off from his childhood and his faith. His detachment can't be repaired, even by his return home.

While Laye and Cheikh Hamidou are only five years younger than the great Senegalese writer and filmmaker Ousmane Sembène**, there's an important generational difference that came up in Ambiguous Adventure. Sembène, who was born in 1923, left Senegal in 1944 and fought in a colonial infantry regiment during World War II. In Ambiguous Adventure, there are Africans who have returned after having fought in the war. The stories from those who, like Sembène, went away and returned contributed to the local understanding of France and the larger world. Sembène left again to live in France in 1946, and only returned to Senegal when it became independent in 1960. After his education at La Sorbonne, Cheikh Hamidou returned to Senegal in 1959 as part of the French overseas government, and on Senegalese independence quickly rose in the Senegalese government***. Laye, for his part, returned to Africa in 1956 and to Guinea when it became independent in 1958, where he too became a government official.

* I only question this because Laye's birth date is listed as January 1, and when I looked up Ousmane Sembène's birth date, which is also listed as January 1 (though 1923 in his case) it gave me some pause, but perhaps they really were both New Year's babies.

** As an aside, I feel very fortunate to have gotten to see Ousmane Sembène in person in his lifetime. I guess he did an American tour on the release of his film Faat Kiné. I saw him introduce it with a Q&A at the Harvard Film Archive when I was living in Boston in 2001 or 2002, though I didn't get around to actually reading one of his books (God's Bits of Wood) until 2018.

*** If you want to know anything at all about Cheikh Hamidou Kane, I hope you read French because his English-language Wikipedia page is 3 sentences long. Camara Laye's and Ousmane Sembène's French Wikipedia pages were also somewhat more helpful than their English-language counterparts.