Allowing himself to be coerced into taking a third wife who is the age of his children, El Hadji cannot consummate the marriage. He has come down with impotence and the book is the story of his resort to everything from traditional beliefs to Western psychiatry to overcome the problem. As a metaphor for Senegal soon after the country won its independence in 1960 (he published Xala in 1973), the story is at times hilarious, at other times heart-breaking. Sembène exposes the veneer of Western culture and beliefs among the elite in a work that can be read for both the enjoyment of the plot itself as well as for its deeper understanding of the difficulties besetting the nation. The end, an extraordinary, hallucinogenic scene, reminded me of nothing so much as a tableau by Fellini or Almodovar or Buñuel (forgive me, these directors are not my favorites and I rely more on a general sense of their work than particular films). But for the ending, which I am still struggling to integrate into what preceded it, I think this is one of his better works. ( )

3,5 ( )

Looks at how the new African middle class have taken over from the colonialists as the exploiters of the people.

In this bleak satire of post-colonial Senegal, the protagonist, El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye, a leading "businessman" (the quotes are Ousmane's) discovers that he is impotent, or xala, on the night of his wedding to his third wife, the beautiful and young N'Gone. Earlier that day, the local Chamber of Commerce and Industry had installed its very first African president, of which all its members, including El Hadji (a title which signifies he has made a pilgrimage to Mecca), are very proud. El Hadji is a sort of middleman, who buys goods in bulk and then resells them to other businesses, and he has become very rich over the years; he also spends liberally, on cars, chauffeurs, villas for each of his wives, and money for their children.

Needless to say, wives number one and two are not very happy about wife number three (although for different reasons), and so of course they are initially suspected putting on curse on El Hadji to cause his xala. He is distraught about it, naturally, and runs around to various Muslim and African wise men and healers, to no avail. In the meantime, his wives are unhappy, the whole town knows about his problem, and his business, through lack of attention and extravagant spending, is being run into the ground. Eventually a special healer resolves his problem but warns El Hadji that what he has taken away he can give back. The ending seems a little tacked on, but makes the political point of the novel.

I have previously read God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane, which depicted a railway strike in colonial Senegal and the way it empowered the women of the community. In this book, he illustrates the world of post-colonial Senegal, the way some people tried to emulate the French colonists, the corruption, the difficulties of polygamy, the way Islam and traditional religions interact, the interest of some in the younger generation of speaking in Wolof and not in French, and more, while using El Hadji's impotence to stand for the impotence of the Africans in the colonial and post-colonial world and, perhaps, the impotence of men confronted by stronger women. As in the earlier book, Ousmane creates interesting characters.

I was not as impressed by this novella as I was by God's Bits of Wood, but it is a dark take on post-colonial Africa.

In this Senegalese novel set in Dakkar, xala is a curse of impotence. This story, an increasingly taut psychodrama about an aging patron and his wives, follows a normative African storyline with typical characters. There is the overbearing mother-in-law type, the mature and successful merchant and his coterie of business colleagues, his handout-seeking modern children, an iconic youngster, the wronged heroine, all around a village and city juxtaposition with wealth creation and loss and the mandatory wedding. Slow to start, the book is not flowery or humorous, and this book is dark in mood if not in plot compared with similar books of its type from other African countries. Most pretense of kindness, forgiveness, and redemption are gone away, and no one in the story comes out ahead. ( )