An interesting (and funny) article about The African

According to Geoff Wisner, it is worth reading The African "to learn more about the author's childhood, personality, and relationship with his father… for the sometimes elegant beauty of the prose". 

However, "don't read it for its insights into Africa and its people. Why? 

The most efficient way to explain is to say that The African scores high on the criteria set out in Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina's essay How to Write About Africa".

Really worth reading the criteria analysis here:

http://wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/j.m.g.-le-clezio-shows-us-how-its-done

The African, by J.M.G. Le Clézio - First chapters

We travel into the youth of the author, to meet a French family that lives in the depths of Nigeria, and not far from Cameroon. We meet the characters, our boy, the father, the mother, the brother, basically the family. Le Clézio presents the situation, why they were there, what it was to be there, the change of moving to Africa after the war, meeting his father, meeting severity and having freedom at the same time. Is this family different? Or no matter that they were in the middle of nowhere, a family is a family with the same kind of issues? What strikes you most in the first part of the book?