I READ THIS BOOK AS A CHILD IN FRENCH,AGAIN AS AN ADULT AND I AM WAITING FOR THE ENGLISH VERSION FOR MY CHILDREN TO ENJOY,IT IS ONE OF THE BEST BOOK I EVER READ,YOU CANNOT PUT IT DOWN ONCE YOU START

When Aristide ceased to be in with his people and their true voice, he lost his power in many ways and one seems to be in the writing of "Dignity". It lacks the "soul" his other work has. I am only 1/2 way through, but am disappointed, and not much motivated to read on.

Dear Titid, I'm always proud to read from you and sure that every one that fight for freedom will enjoy it.

This 1998 work by French-speaking Africa's premier novelist is a vehemently outspoken satire of despotic and corrupt African regimes from the 1960s to the 1990s. It's the life story of Koyaga, dictator and "founding father" of the fictitious West African state called the Republique du Golfe. Koyaga's history is recounted over the course of a "donsomana," a six-night storytelling by a hunters' bard, and the novel reflects this in its six-part form, interspersed with asides and proverbs drawn from the author's Malinke roots.

Koyaga himself is an interesting and contradictory character, despite remaining rather underdeveloped as the author concentrates on his political rather than personal life. He's a military strongman who took power through innumerable assassinations and acts of brutality. But Koyaga isn't portrayed as evil--in fact he seems to be beloved by his countrymen, at least those who aren't constantly trying to kill him. The reader is introduced to and immersed in the perspective of the African tyrant, one who after three decades in power has begun to believe his own self-serving propaganda.

The most interesting sections of "Waiting for the Vote" are those depicting Koyaga's visits to his fellow African dictators. Here the novelist gives us very thinly disguised versions of autocratic regimes of days gone by--Sekou Toure's Guinea, Felix Houpouet-Boigny's Cote d'Ivoire, Bokassa's Central African Empire, Mobutu's Zaire, and even the Morocco of King Hassan II. Each of these leaders lets Koyaga in on his own secrets to maintaining power, and gives him fatherly advice on preserving his own grip. We see otherwise kindly and respected statesmen who jail and torture their own friends, just to be sure of their loyalty. We see presidents who make no distinction between personal and public wealth; it's all theirs for the taking. And we see wily survivors who outwit countless threats to their rule and their lives, clinging to power in the face of tremendous opposition at home and abroad. Koyaga takes all their lessons to heart and becomes a master of the game of political survival.

All this makes for great commentary, but how does fit into a novel? In presenting these images, "Waiting for the Vote" loses some of its narrative punch. The reader, if she's been reading the papers at all over the last decade, already knows how things are going to come out. We know that the 1990s will usher in a wave of "democratization" and "transparent government" in Africa, curbing (though not ending) the continent's autocratic excesses. But along the way we get a rare insight into what it's like to be a dictator, to have an entire nation singing your praises while simultaneously resenting you and, time after time, trying to assassinate you.

With such keen observations of the modern African political scene, why must Kourouma resort to putting his fictional gloss on actual events? Why not simply come out with a collection of trenchant essays? The likely answer is that if he were to describe Houphouet-Boigny or King Hassan II the same way he describes their fictionalized stand-ins, his books would likely be banned in those countries where he'd most want them to be read. "Waiting for the Vote" gets as close as it can to political expose without quite crossing that line into dangerous territory.

A note from Carrol F. Coates (the translator) about THE FESTIVAL OF THE GREASY POLE: in his review Bob Newman stated that there was "no explanation" of the acronym NOFES (National Office for the Electrification of Souls). If he had looked at my introduction, he would have found the explanation: a major project of Francois Duvalier was the production of energy (specifically, electric energy) in Haiti: Depestre even uses the slightly altered name of Peligre Dam, constructed under Duvalier--"Veligre" Dam in the novel. "Electricity" becomes the symbol of control and of the project of "energizing" the country by Dictator-President Zachary (the fictional caricature of Duvalier). Unlike the reviewer, it seems to me that the symbolism of electricity as a means and a symbol of control by the dictator is fairly transparent in the text of the novel.

As a political exile for most of his life, Depestre must have harbored deep despair for the fate of his country, Haiti, forever wrapped in oppression, poverty, and ecological degradation. His feeling boiled over in this novel in which hopelessness oozes from every page. The Haitians are valiant and resourceful, but they are doomed, they are bound to be crushed. THE FESTIVAL OF THE GREASY POLE is not so much a novel as a political fable which explains, far better than an academic treatise or newspaper article, the crushing conditions that obtained during the dictatorship of the awful Duvalier, a.k.a. Papa Doc, who is called Zachary in the novel, and his government, called the National Office for the Electrification Of Souls, or NOFESO-Zacharian for short (?). The word "Haiti" does not appear in the novel, but Haitian culture, especially its connections to the African religion sometimes known as "Voodoo" or Vodun, and Haitian history are squarely in the center of the work. There is no explanation. Whether all of this would be comprehensible to a person unfamiliar with Haiti is unclear. It may be confusing to such readers, who, I think it is safe to assume, make up the majority of the readers in the world. Why did Depestre choose "National Office for the Electrification of Souls" as a title ? He no doubt had a reason, but it remains a mystery to me because I don't know Haiti that well.

Perhaps some broadening of scope would have made this a more universal novel. The government holds a festival in which men try to climb to the top of a greasy pole. Can our hero do it and so show the NOFESO-Zacharian dictatorship that its opponents can strike a blow (however ineffectual) against it ? That is the plot of the novel. What can a thinking individual do when totalitarian rulers have completely crushed a nation? This is the question Depestre asks. I am not just intellectualizing about what I may or may not understand as the point of the story. On page 105, the hero asserts "...In the paradise where we live, a pole smeared with s... can be President-for-Life and vice versa." Can the hero conquer this pole? What would be the result of such brave action ? The translation could have been a little smoother. But if you are interested in what a Haitian writer, obviously a thoughtful man, has to say about the situation in his country in an allegorical way, then read this book.

Depestre fills your brain with what is like to be in a system where you have no choice other than stand for what you believe. The reader does not need to be latinamerican to feel the experience of repression. The fluent narrative involves you more and more and when you less expected...you have finished the book... i strongly recomend it.