Abstract EN:

The theme of the Atlantic Slave Trade, a prolific one in European literatures, has scarcely been dealt with in African fiction. This paradox calls for an explanation. If few writers have felt it fit to explore this fundamental historical episode, those who did do so, have violated an unprecedented taboo. These writers, who rank amongst the greatest ones in African literature, include such as prominent literary figures as Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka who was the first African writer to be awarded a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, Ghanaian novel-writer and playwright Ama Ata Aidoo and her fellow-countrymen Ayi Kwei Armah and Yaw M. Boateng – or even Chinua Achebe in his novel Things Fall Apart. They echo the writings of 18th century writer Olaudah Equiano (also known as Gustavus Vassa), their forerunner from Nigeria… These writers have all focused their works on themes linked to the Atlantic slave trade and they have analyzed this reality as a trauma which writing must heal and a crisis of civilization that still has echoes in our modern culture, rather than a remote accident of history. This work traces the literary approaches to the theme of slavery, more specifically the metaphoric re-enactment of the original crime: the betrayal of African by their own countrymen.