Onitsha
One of 45 copies on vélin de Hollande, from the deluxe issue (no. 25).
Onitsha is a small river port on the Niger, in Africa, and the central setting of the initiatory journey undertaken by Fintan, a twelve-year-old boy. Boarding the ship Surabaya with his mother Maria Luisa, known as Maou, on 13 March 1948, they set out to join his father, Geoffroy. The narrative is partly autobiographical: Le Clézio himself made the reverse journey at the age of six. The Biafran War (two million victims) and decolonization form its backdrop. In reading Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Le Clézio no doubt drew much of his inspiration for this wonderful mosaic, a mythological and historical portrait of a West Africa combining dream and revolt.
It is the story of a personal exile and a universal flight: just as his character journeys back in time, the narrator in search of the city of Meroë, so Le Clézio returns to the sources of a vanished kingdom — the lost paradise of childhood.
A very fine copy.