Un Piège Sans Fin: Roman

Paris: Librairie Stock, 1960. First Edition. First Printing. Octavo (20.5cm.); original white wrappers printed in red and black; [11],12-254pp. Light foxing to spine, else a Near Fine, unopened copy. Beninese author's first novel, which does not express popular anticolonialist tropes in order to demonstrate that it was possible for an African to write a non-political novel. The fate of his protagonist, Ahouna, is told in two parts: "the first part is a report made by a Dahomean scientist name Houanou...of Ahanou's own first-person reminiscences of the happy years of his life as a pastoral poet and musician before he became a murderer in consequence of his wife's irrational jealousy. In the second part, the tribulations of Ahanou are recounted in the third person by Houanou himself as Ahanou is imprisoned by the colonial authorities, escapes with the deceitful help of one of his victims' kinsmen, is captured by the latter and burnt alive in punishment for his deed (Gérard, ed. European-Language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa, p.532-533).