Waiting for the vote of the wild animals /
Ahmadou Kourouma ; translated and with an afterword by Carrol F. Coates.
- Charlottesville : University Press of Virginia, 2001.
- viii, 277 p. ; 24 cm.
- CARAF books .
- CARAF books. .
Includes bibliographical references (p. [269]-271).
"Carrol F. Coates's translation, Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals, introduces English-language audiences to Kourouma's irreverent view of the machinations of the African dictators who played the West against the East during the thirty years of the cold war. Profiting from Western financial support, the dictators built palaces, shrines, and hunting preserves for their personal gratifiction as they paraded about with numerous mistreses, marabouts and advisors.". "In the style of a sere who sings the praises of the thirty-year career of the master hunter and president Koyaga (a fictionalized Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo), Kourouma treats his readers to a brief overview of the French colonization of the "Naked people," hunters in West African mountain country, followed by an account of Koyaga's assumption of power through treachery, assassination, and sorcery. In an interview Kourmouma noted the Togolese assumption that if the people did not turn out to vote for Eyadema in the democratic elections following the cold war, the wild animals would come out of the forest to vote for him. The novel ends with an apocalyptic stampede, although the animals are probably fleeing a bush conflagration rather than running to the polls."--BOOK JACKET.