Oyono in Slovene: Toundi's Visit to Yugoslavia

Abstract

In 1979 the publishing house mladinska knjiga released the slovene translation of ferdinand oyono's une vie de boy (1956) as Življenje hišnega služabnika. The book appeared largely as a result of an order “from above” in what was then Yugoslavia, mandating publication of texts by writers from Nonaligned Movement (NAM) countries. Marjana Samide, the translator, had previously translated From a Crooked Rib (1970), by the Somali writer Nuruddin Farah (Upognjeno rebro [1978]), and she was given Une vie de boy by a Mladinska knjiga series editor because both authors, Farah and Oyono, were from Africa, seen evidently as a unitary place.