Batouala
One of 30 copies on vergé pur fil, from the deluxe issue, this copy no. 7.
With Batouala, René Maran entered literary history as the first Black writer to receive the Prix Goncourt. Born in French Guiana and educated in the Western tradition, he was serving as a colonial administrator in Oubangui-Chari when the novel appeared. His achievement was to depict, from within, the life of an African village, breaking with the crudest clichés and traditional exotic imagery.
Classical in form, Batouala was revolutionary in substance: its famous preface vigorously denounced the destruction of African cultures and colonial exploitation. This text led to Maran being persecuted and censored by the administration, despite the prestige of the Prix Goncourt. The expanded 1937 edition, with a new preface, revisited this scandal, stressing how much “singular courage is needed simply to state what is.”
The jury’s choice brought Albin Michel — already publisher of the 1917 laureate with La Flamme au poing — a second Goncourt, and rewarded the house with one of the most significant books of the interwar period.
From the “Prix Goncourt” library of Gérard Pouguet, with bookplate.