The Poor Christ of Bomba (Masterplots II: World Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Alexandre Biyidi
- First Published: 1956
- Type of Work: Satirical realism
- Time of Work: The 1930’s
- Setting: Southern Cameroon, the small village of Bomba and several yet smaller villages throughout the forest
- Principal Characters: Father Drumont, Denis, Zacharia, Vidal, Catherine, Clementine
- Genres: Long fiction, Realism, Satire
- Subjects: Africa or Africans, Colonies or colonization, Prostitution or prostitutes, Missions or missionaries, Villages, 1930’s, Polygamy or bigamy, Christianity, Forests or forestry, Syphilis
- Locales: Cameroon
The Novel
Structured through the device of a young teenager’s daily journal, The Poor Christ of Bomba records the tour of a French Catholic missionary, Father Drumont, and his two assistants—Denis, Drumont’s “boy” and the narrator, and Zacharia, the cook—through a dozen tiny villages in the forest of the Tala region. Bomba, itself a small village surrounded by the forest, teems with activity, sustained primarily by the mission’s sixa, a home for the prenuptial training of young women to encourage monogamy among the traditionally polygamous Talas....
[The entire page is 2970 words long]
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