Leaving his home for a drink in a café where he is accustomed, a man learns of the macabre discovery that has shaken his village: the lifeless body of a woman has been found near a beach, not far from Dakar. Ramata, the victim, aged prematurely, was once still a sublime beauty, forming with her rich husband a couple at the top of the social hierarchy. But money was not enough to make her happy and behind her resplendent appearance, the young woman hid the misfortune of a life without love and a body impervious to pleasure. Until the meeting with his dark angel… The police have been alerted, but it turns out that Gobi, an old bar pillar who is nevertheless very observant, already knows the end of the story. Stimulated by a bottle of wine and a few cigarettes, sheltered from the cold rain that fell outside, he will tell everything in the smallest details.
This is how Ramata begins, the second novel by the Senegalese writer Abasse Ndione. A story within a story, built like a puzzle as much as a long flashback, Gobi’s testimony will indeed take the place of an investigation, allowing the establishment of an immense series of characters who all play, from a one way or another, a role in the drama. Alongside the narrator, we begin to follow the twists, turns and twists of the plot. And we are all the more surprised that the author also plays on the form given to his fiction. With him, the detective novel borrows in turn from the fantastic narrative, the tale, the erotic novel, rationality often giving way to strangeness, even to magic.
The thriller also allows the writer to point out certain social issues such as corruption, excision, mental illness, when he is not using it to denounce the turpitudes of the political world, by evoking by name its actors. We delight in following this reconstruction, as the adventures follow one another, giving the feeling of a huge soap opera. No wonder such a book gave rise to an eponymous film in 2011 by Congolese actor and director Léandre-Alain Baker.
Sassy and cheeky
Born in 1948, a nurse for many years at Le Dantec Hospital in Dakar, Abasse Ndione came to the public attention with the publication of La Vie en Spiral (New African Editions of Senegal, Dakar, 1984 and Gallimard, Paris, 1988), a first impertinent and earthy novel which depicted a band of merry men essentially occupied, from morning to evening, to provide themselves and then to smoke drugs. With Ramata, the author reveals without seeming to reflect on his more serious society, even if he also plays on the comicality of many situations. But the pleasure of writing and giving pleasure to reading clearly remains in his eyes the central objective of his work.
Moreover, the narrator who has reached the end of Gobi’s story verifies its effects in these terms: “During his long narration, pell-mell, in turn, I was moved to tears, I was happy, I smiled, I shuddered, I exclaimed “Ndeyssane!” to express my pity, I learned a lot, I had a hard-on, I was moved, I thought of God, of his prophet Mamadou, peace and salvation be upon him, I was circumspect, I applauded with both hands, I asked myself questions, I trembled, I felt nauseous, I laughed out loud, my heart sank, I said congratulations, I cheered up, I I was saddened, I revolted (…) In short, not for a single moment did I have to be bored. “Write to make people laugh as much as to read, and always make sure, thanks to the wink of the thriller, that all is well that ends badly.
