Xala
by Ousmane Sembène
Cursed on his wedding night. The cure is everything.
you want satire that uses a man's sexual humiliation to diagnose an entire class's moral failure
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El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye joins the Senegalese bourgeoisie on the day of independence and immediately takes a third wife as a symbol of his new status. That night he discovers he has xala — the curse of sexual impotence. The cure he seeks becomes a journey through the corruption and self-deception of the post-independence African elite. Sembène made this into a film too — both are essential. The funniest and most savage dispatch from inside the class of Africans who replaced the colonizers and reproduced their worst habits.
WHERE THIS BOOK LIVES
- Setting
- Senegal • West Africa
- Voice
- Written by a Senegalese author
- Themes
- Laughing at Empire
