Bachir Tamsir Niane

Magic realism in Africa? Bachir Tamsir Niane

There are many studies on African literature that detail the linguistic prowess of authors, or the innovations in their handling of the French language. However, we have found that there is no serious study that has addressed the issue of magic realism in African literature. We have set ourselves the task, through a corpus of three contemporary African novels from the post-colonial Francophone area, to see if we can detect the trace of a magic-realist writing. These are the works of Sony Labou Tansi La vie et demie, Williams Sassine's Le jeune homme de sable, and Cheik Aliou Ndao's Mbaam Dictateur. Through a careful reading of these texts, we intend to show that we can claim the existence in the field of African literature, of this current that is claimed to originate in South America, and of which Gabriel Garcia Marquez is presented as the most worthy representative.