Littérature et Apartheid: La réception de Lewis Nkosi en France

ABSTRACTLewis Nkosi had very close ties with France, its literature, thinkers and language. For more than one reason it is worth investigating the reception which his work enjoys in France. It goes back, firstly, to the interests which French Africanists like Jacques Alvarez-Pereire or later Jean Sevry showed for Nkosi as a person and for his writings. Secondly, Nkosi's emblematic and innovative novel Mating Birds, 1986 was instantly translated into French as Le sable des Blancs (Balland 1986), then re-issued as Livre de poche and later on by Dapper with a postscript by the Chadian writer Nimrod (2002). In the French academic world the interest for anglophone literature is a late phenomenon. At the same time there was a will to introduce the anti-apartheid struggle to French intellectuals as well as to a broader audience. As such the reception of Lewis Nkosi's work is part of a wider one on contemporary South African writers whose writings were translated and published in anthologies, scholarly collection...