Customer Reviews

Ambiguous Adventure (African Writers)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a must for anyone interested in African literature, Islamic literature, and the experience of losing culture in the 20th century experience of modernization. This is the story of an African who is separated from his family, religion, and culture as he "moves up" in the world, eventually moving to France for his education. The description of what is lost in this transaction-- from a personal and spiritual point of view-- truly took me into the experience of an "other" seldom understood.

Samba Diallo stands between the two worlds. He is raised an obedient Muslim in the Diallobe tribe in Senegal yet is torn between his traditional world and that of the French invaders. In this largely philosophic work, Samba Diallo must chose not only the path between African and European, but also between God and Science. Mix in some Pascal and a Sufi Sheik known as "the fool" and Kane has created a world that keeps you interested despite a lack of action. The final chapter leaves you pondering.

I would not put this on my must read list above Things Fall Apart or The River Between, but worthwhile if you've already read those two.

Ambiguous Adventure is initially gripping with its description of a Koranic school and the life of the protagonist, Samba Diallo. Samba is sent to the local French school, and from there goes to France, which leads to conflict between the values and beliefs he was brought up with and the emptiness he feels in the Western culture. The novel successfully depicts the sense of a divided self and the conflict between "progress" and traditional values and beliefs. However at times it becomes bogged down in philosophical discussion. Because this seems to overshadow the setting and characters, at times the people in the book feel very removed and distant. However, the novel is certainly a valuable representation of Sengalese literature especially in terms of the impact of colonization.

I love this book; I read it in the original French many years ago and am just coming back to it now in this English translation.

I do not know of another book that so richly and respectfully describes a culture very different from our Western Amazon-dot-com based culture. You can tell that the author cares deeply for the characters that he writes about and that he has a great deal of empathy for them and their decisions. Even though you might not have a lot in common with the African characters, you will understand them from the force of their personalities as the author describes them.

This is a beautiful book and well worth reading in these times, when it seems that we are afraid of other cultures and their protagonists.

The book "Ambiguous Adventure" was short enough for me to read in one day (I had to read it for my comparative literature class at Berkeley), and the way that it is written is easy enough to understand. It is separated into two parts: the first part takes place in the 'eastern world' of Islamic Diallobe, and the second part takes place in the 'western world' of Paris, France. There is a temptation to believe that this book tries to juxtapose the two different worlds, but the book is truly just a portrait of what effect it has in one person. Oftentimes, a book that compares an Islamic nation with a Western nation is driven by the difference in politics, but with "Ambiguous Adventures", Hamidou Kane's purpose is for us, the readers, to see religious transformation. The reason I gave the book four stars, however, is I felt that while the first part proceeded at a steady pace... as I was reading part two, I simply couldn't keep up with the flow of events. Guiltily, I did want the book to end.

This is not a book about Africa. It is about Africa being assimilated by Europe and must be read in that context. Once you realize that, you can see a great deal of detail and complexity five or ten years after a first reading (esp. when you don't have an essay due next Monday about the book)

This book is not for the average reader. If you are into abstract thinking or if you are a philosophy major, you may like this book. My view is that Cheikh Hamidou Kane was trying to impress his French audience with the philosophy he read at the University of Paris. There is nothing 'African' about Kane's storytelling. I also found structural deficiencies in the organization of the book.
You would find better Senegalese writers in Mariama Ba ("So Long A Letter") and Sembene Ousmane ("God's Bits of Wood", "Xala").