Camara Laye “the African child”

This is a short and sweet autobiography of a man from Guinea written once he moved to France. The back of the book says hat Camara Laye wrote the book when he was in France working in a “vast car factory” and when he was “lonely and unhappy”. It must be true because he writes about his childhood with a certain humility and tenderness.

It is a quick read. It is light but interesting and does show something of what Guinea must have been like at the time.

I had read it before, in French, since we studied the book in my last year of junior high school. I remembered mostly the mood of it and very little of the actual story, but I remembered the story about the little black snake and this time again, for whatever reason it is my favourite part of the book.