Poor Christ of Bomba
Award-winning author Mongo Beti presents The Poor Christ of Bomba, a cutting satirical critique on the role of Catholic missionaries and French colonialism in 1930s Cameroon. A revolutionary novel in its time.
In the small village of Bomba, a French missionary priest is instructed to build a parish for its residents. Father Drumont has one important task; to save the village from heresy by preparing its girls for Christian marriage.
A servant in Father Drumont's house, a young boy named Denis is reliant on the priest's generosity after the death of his mother. In the eyes of the Catholic church, Denis is the perfect example of the African heathen saved by Christianity – but the reality of what happens behind closed doors in much more sinister.
'One of the foremost African writers of the independence generation.' Guardian
Mongo Beti, also known as Alexandre Biyidi Awala, was born in 1932 in the village of Akométan, near Mbalmayo in Cameroon.
Expelled at an early age from a missionary school in Mbalmayo for challenging ideas of colonialism and religion, he moved to France in 1951 to continue his education in literature, first at Aix-en-Provence then at the Sorbonne in Paris. He wrote regularly for the journal African Presence, where he published his first short story 'Without Hatred or Love' in 1953.
His most acclaimed novel, The Poor Christ of Bomba (1956) was banned in Cameroon for its controversial criticism of the Catholic Church and colonial rule. Beti maintained his hope for independence, however, and was eventually forced into exile. He worked as a literature teacher in France at the Lycée Corneille for the next thirty years before returning to Cameroon permanently in 1994 where he continued his activism through demonstrations and in his writing.
Beti died in 2001.