Novel
Cuando los combes luchaban
Not translated into English
Leoncio Evita Enoy · 1953
Synopsis
At the end of the nineteenth century, on the coast of the Río Benito, the Combés, a Ndowe people, come into contact and conflict with American and Spanish colonial interests. A darker threat awaits them: coming from the neighbouring French territory, the sect of the leopard-men is ravaging their lands. To face it, Upolo and Vilangua, and their rival Penda, must come to terms with a couple of American Presbyterian missionaries and two Spanish settlers.
Context
Published in 1953 by the Institute of African Studies in Madrid with the subtitle of novel of manners of Spanish Guinea, the book is regarded as the first Equatorial Guinean novel and one of the first Black African novels written in Spanish. Received at the time as an ethnographic work, then charged with assimilationism, it is read again today for its critique of Western and African customs and its marks of resistance; the debate remains open. Reissued in 1996, it was reissued again in 2016, with an introduction by José Ramón Trujillo.
Who it is for
A novel of adventure and manners in Spanish, for readers who want to read the founding book of Equatorial Guinean literature and judge its ambiguities.
Prizes and reception
Acclaimed on publication as a testimony on Spanish Guinea, it has become a contested classic of Hispano-African literature.
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