Tobias Warner, Review of the republication of Yambo Ouologuem’s Bound to Violence, Times Literary Supplement, April 12, 2024
Yambo Ouologuem’s Bound to Violence is one of the more extraordinary literary intrigues of the past century. Born in 1940 in Bandiagara, Mali, Ouologuem ascended to the heights of the French educational system and brought out his first novel in 1968 with the prestig- ious publisher Le Seuil. Le Devoir de Violence would go on to win the Prix Renaudot. A brilliant career awaited – until accusations of plagiarism erupted. Ouologuem denied any wrongdoing, but the damage was done. He returned to Mali and largely abandoned the literary world until his death in 2017. It was the TLS that played a key role in unleashing the controversy. In an article that ran under the rather arch headline “Something New Out of Africa?” (May 5, 1972), the unsigned author – who remains anonymous (see Letters, September 2, 2022) – presented passages from Graham Greene’s It’s a Battle- field (1934) side-by-side with similar ones from Le Devoir de Violence. An accompanying commentary spelled out the accusation. The French press ran with the story and Greene’s US publishers threatened to sue Le Seuil, setting in motion a chain of events that eventually led to the withdrawal of the original novel from print. What was decried as plagiarism appears in a different light today.
Tobias Warner 