Comrade Papa

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Comrade Papa

by
GauZ'

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	Comrade Papa
Author:	GauZ'
Genre:	Novel
Written:	2018 (Eng. 2024)
Length:	243 pages
Original in:	French
Availability:	Comrade Papa - US
	Comrade Papa - UK
	Comrade Papa - Canada
	Camarade Papa - Canada
	Camarade Papa - France
	Camarada Papá - España

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

	directly from:

French title: Camarade Papa
Translated by Frank Wynne

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Our Assessment:

B : effective takes, enjoyably done

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
The Guardian	.	21/6/2024	John Self
TLS	.	2/8/2024	Lara Pawson

From the Reviews:

"(F)unny, ebullient, often chaotic" - John Self, The Guardian

"GauZ' tells the tale of two individuals, separated by a century but connected in curious and, ultimately, rather beautiful ways. (...) If you are foolish enough to open this book with a set of assumptions about where it will go, prepare to be wrong-footed." - Lara Pawson, Times Literary Supplement

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

Comrade Papa has two narrators who follow a similar trajectory, from western Europe to West Africa -- but a century apart. One is a boy who was born and has grown up in 1970s Amsterdam, the son of revolutionaries railing against capitalism:

To Comrade Papa, the Nether Lands is Patient Zero. Like science researchers, he and Maman came here so they could understand Patient Zero and find a vaccine for the world stalk-market disease.

       The parents' revolutionary ardor is so fervent that when Maman up and leaves: "Comrade Papa tells me that Maman has left to go to the socialist paradise of Comrade Hodja, the man in the clouds on the poster over her desk". (That would be Enver Hoxha, ruler of "Mama's Albanianist paradise".) The boy calls his father 'Comrade Papa', and the activist has tried to lead by example -- not least with the names he's given the boy: Illitch and Davidovitch (both: "from the glorious Red October" -- the middle names of Lenin and Trotsky) and Shaoshan (which the boy says is: "the Great Helmsman's middle name", though it is actually Mao's birthplace); his mother gave him the more prosaic name of: "Anouman, the bird man" After his mother leaves, Comrade Papa ships the boy off to relatives in the Côte d'Ivoire, convincing him that he'll: "be an undercover agent for Maman and me", and for the revolution.
       The place Anouman is sent to is Assikasso -- the same place the other narrator came to, nearly a century earlier, a time when: "The future of these coastal lands as territories of France is being played out", as the colonial power consolidates its hold, vying with the British for territory in West Africa. This narrator is Maxime Dabilly, a young man who, after the death of his parents, escapes France for adventure in Africa -- despite it being a time when: "only two men in ten survive two years" in this challenging environment.
       Much of the charm of the novel lies in how its narrators describe the world they encounter, from Anouman's descriptions of Amsterdam to both of their dealing with the very foreign worlds that they then wind up in. Dabilly describes many of the cultural differences -- but is observant enough to also realize that: "During our explorations, we too are being explored", and he's well aware of the constant different gives and takes here. Meanwhile, Anouman transposes his revolutionary spirit to small-town Assikasso and the school there -- leading the headmaster to observe: "We need to detoxify this child or we'll have serious trouble".
       With brief historic vignettes interspersed in the text as well -- notably a grand one at the beginning of the novel describing the difficulties of landing at the colonial capital, Grand-Bassam, with its infamous riptide -- Comrade Papa offers a good, broad look at the time of the French consolidation of power in West Africa, with a great deal about the cultures and peoples the French encountered and dealt with. Anouman's more contemporary account is colored through the mind and eyes of a much younger narrator -- made clear also by his language, and his (often amusing) warping of words and terms ('stalk-market' for 'stock market', etc.), but is also revealing.
       Dabilly notes that:

To the Negrophobes, "The Negro is ignorant, the only thing he understands is a kick up the arse." To the Negrophiles, "The Negro is a big child, he needs to be educated with the firm but fair authority of a father." The tropics favour cut-and-dried philosophies. Nuance is never appropriate.

       GauZ' has his protagonists open to more nuance, allowing them also room for growth. Unsurprisingly, also, a connection between the two narrators and their stories is eventually also revealed.
       Comrade Papa is a fine, lively novel. GauZ' writes well, in both the voices of the more adult and insightful Dabilly as well as that of the confident indoctrinated youngster (who nevertheless proves adaptable). Ideologies -- colonial and revolutionary -- color much of the narratives, shaping how the narrators see their worlds, and how it is presented to them, but even for all of Anouman's sloganeering neither is completely held back by theirs. Both use what they are familiar with to provide structure, to retain some hold, but they also adapt and move beyond it.
       Despite the connections, the two main narratives exert different pulls and don't quite strike a balance here. Nevertheless, the stories are very engaging, and engagingly told, with translator Wynne doing well in matching GauZ' creative word- and language-play.

- M.A.Orthofer, 2 October 2024

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Links:

Comrade Papa:

Biblioasis publicity page
MacLehose publicity page
Le Nouvel Attila publicity page
Le Livre de Poche publicity page
Libros de las Malas Compañías publicity page

Reviews:

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of books from and about Africa
See Index of French literature

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About the Author:

Ivorian author GauZ' (actually: Armand Patrick Gbaka-Brédé) was born in 1971.

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