The Cameroonian writer and politician Leopold Ferdinand Oyono died, Thursday, June 10 in Yaounde at the age of 80 years. Victim of a discomfort following an official ceremony in honor of United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the palace of Etoudi, he collapsed in front of the car which was to take him home and s' is off while being transported to General Hospital. Born in 1929 in Ebolowa, Cameroon, Ferdinand Oyono was successively awarded in the humanities and public affairs. Graduated in law from the Sorbonne and diplomacy from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA), after school in Yaounde and Provins, it is first noticed for his literary activity, with three novels published in the late 1950s, as settlement comes to an end.
Une vie de boy (1956), The Old Negro and Medal (1956) and Europe Path (1960), involving the colonial system in force in Cameroon - and more generally in Africa -: authoritarian practices of the administration, manipulation of the missionaries, contempt vis-à-vis the colonized ... His work, alternately funny and caustic, the place alongside the great writers of the time involved, such Sembene Ousmane or Mongo Beti , whose approach seen against a dynamic view of history.
A proactive approach that will truly Ferdinand Oyono endorsed in 1959 by leading a successful career as a senior official in the service of Cameroon: ambassador to several countries as well as with the UN in New York and then Foreign Minister and Minister of Culture. This activity will take a politician not on writing until the death of Ferdinand Oyono, fifty years after the publication of Path Europe.
Read:
Une vie de boy , Julliard, 1956
Old Negro and the Medal , Julliard, 1956
Path Europe, Julliard, 1960
Sources: Jeuneafrique.com , Africultures
