The Poor Christ of Bomba

Mongo Beti

Heinemann, 1971 - Fiction - 219 pages

In Bomba girls are being prepared for Christian marriage. Gradually it becomes apparent that the local churchmen have been using the girls for their own purposes.

Contents

• Section 1: 2
• Section 2: 3
• Section 3: 12

About the author

Mongo Beti was born in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, in 1932. He received his early education in local schools, it was followed by studies at the Sorbonne in Paris. Now a French citizen, he lives and teaches in Paris, where he is the editor of the journal Peuples Noirs, Peuples Africains, founded in 1978. Beti wrote his first novel, Ville Cruelle (1954), under the pseudonym Eza Boto. A favorite theme of Beti is the failure of colonial missionary efforts in Africa. He speaks not so much against Christianity as against the futile Europeanization of Africans in the name of religion. The Poor Christ of Bomba (1956), his best-known work, is written as a diary. The novel is a satire of Christian religion in precolonial Cameroon.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Poor Christ of Bomba; Issue 88 of African writers series, ISSN 0065-4108
• Author: Mongo Beti
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Heinemann, 1971
• Original from: the University of California
• Digitized: May 2, 2008
• ISBN: 0435900889, 9780435900885
• Length: 219 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Fiction / Literary