“Everything here needs to be invented, beginning with ourselves,” so says a European colonizer on the Ivory coast early in Comrade Papa, but he may as well be describing every character in this, the second book by GauZ’ to be translated into English.
Here two characters, generations apart, narrate their respective experiences of coming of age. There is Dabilly, a highly intelligent young Frenchman in the late 19th century who, having recently lost both parents, grows up via vocation changes from altar boy to arms manufacturer to colonial bureaucrat on the Ivory coast. Then there is Anouman, a modern kid in Amsterdam entirely indoctrinated into his parents’ hardline communism, who is shipped off to family in the Cote d’Ivorie when his parents seem to decide they’d rather pretend to make a political difference in Europe than parent their child.
What should immediately draw in any conscious reader is the child Anouman’s hilarious narration. The book begins with him traveling around alongside “Comrade Papa”—Anouman’s Communist-propaganda-spouting father who has little to say unless he’s railing against the unjust systems put in place by capitalism and its lackeys. Raised in such a way, having the language but not the understanding, Anouman complains about the “lumpy proletariat” and “swas-stickers,” worries for the “oh, pressed people” and “alien nation.” He refers to a ticket inspector as “a lackey Sick O’Phant of big capitalism” and later thinks about “Dr. Franz and the retching of the earth.” And there’s plenty more where that came from.
Beneath the humor is the blatant reminder of the so-called invented self. Anouman is being raised not as “a new man” but as the same old man, spouting off ideologies he does not understand and that fail to solve complex issues. When he gets into fights at school, he refers to them as necessary “class warfare,” which is funny but also reminds us of how all people can and do use ideologies and larger narratives—politics, religion, nationhood—to justify their actions, even when they don’t understand the very ideology they are claiming to uphold. It’s the same reason why Anouman’s father looks embarrassed when his son uses his Comrade Papa’s ideology-laced language in public spaces; it begins to feel like a justification for certain deficiencies, and he, perhaps, is not as firm as a believer as he would have his son believe.
Dabilly’s narrative—a colonial story taking place four generations earlier than Anouman’s—is not always as humorous as Anouman’s, but it is equally enthralling. His tale reads as a sort of postcolonial antidote to something like Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Early on, Dabilly’s mother dies, and he watches his father go mad; upon his deathbed, thinking he is the Roman legionnaire Abilius, Dabilly’s father, says
The land belongs to us. We subjugated it. This is our home, Maximus, heed my words… It is to us these Gauls owe their civilization. I have ploughed the furrows. You need only follow them, my dear Maximus …
Dabilly takes the colonial intent of his father’s words to heart, to listen to his ancestor, and is soon heading into the seemingly unknown reaches of West Africa to “subjugate the land” and bring “civilization,” to follow the metaphorical furrows others have already plowed.
For both of the book’s protagonists, their time on the Ivory Coast changes them. They come with certain expectations, which are challenged, reshaped, and made more nuanced. And the same goes for the reader of this book. Yes, GauZ’ exposes the evils of colonialism, but he does so, too, with nuance: the French and British are shown to be different types of colonizers, just as the peoples of the Ivory Coast are differentiated in the ways they work with or against the colonizers. Indeed, GauZ’ manages to squeeze Pynchon-amounts of characters into this 243-page book, and though we ultimately find many of these characters unknowable, they make up a multitudinous, complex image of the people who have been touched by colonialism and its aftermath.
The other way GauZ’ manages to provide not just two linked stories, but a powerful impression as well, is by playing with narrative structures. Much like in his first book, Standing Heavy, which features extended digressions on subjects such as the types of people who might steal from a store or encyclopedically listing the overpriced items wealthy Parisian shoppers purchase, here GauZ’ pauses to provide asides where we are told about colonial history through what feel like primary documents from colonial times. And although Comrade Papa feels more decisively plot-driven than Standing Heavy, particularly in the way GauZ’ wraps up the narrative more completely and provides clear thematic overlaps between the two protagonists’ stories, it is an equally engrossing and entertaining sophomore book.
I’d be remiss not to mention a separate reason as to why this novel is such a joy to read: it’s translator, Frank Wynne. Wynne—who translated Vernon Subutex for goodness sake!—does a masterful job here, as he did with Standing Heavy. He’s one of those modern translators who, if we pay attention, can open up our eyes to new cultures, but also new aesthetics realities. He’s up there with Lydia Davis, Megan McDowell, Michael Hofman, and Damion Searls, to name just a few of modern favorites. For someone to not only be willing to help introduce us to a great writer like GauZ’, but also to translate tricky Marxist malapropisms and French depictions of terms and proper names they encounter while meeting various language and peoples within what would become known as the Ivory Coast—it’s quite a feat!
Anouman and Dabilly change as the book progresses, reinventing themselves, but I’d say GauZ’, too, is reinventing himself, never growing stagnant but instead boldly trying new things. His subjects change, but so does his style. And I’d go further, even, and argue GauZ’ is also trying to reinvent the modern novel. He is one to watch, an author for this century who continues that age-old push against the boundaries that define a novel and what it can do.
Comrade Papa, by GauZ’. Translated by Frank Wynne. Windsor, Ontario, Canada: Biblioasis, October 2024. 240 pages. $18.95, paper.
Matt Martinson teaches honors courses at Central Washington University, and occasionally reviews books for Heavy Feather. Recent fiction and nonfiction appear in Lake Effect, 1 Hand Clapping, and Coffin Bell; his piece, “Trout and Trout Remain,” received a Notable mention in Best American Essays 2024.
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