The Noir Atlantic

The Noir Atlantic follows the influence of African American author Chester Himes on Francophone African crime fiction. In 1953, Himes emigrated to Paris; he struggled there, just as he had in the United States. In 1957, his luck changed: the famous French Srie noire brought out the first installment of his Harlem crime series, La reine des pommes. Suddenly, he was a household name in France. Later, he would also have a significant influence on Francophone African writers; for them, Himess blend of absurdist humor and violence offered an alternative to a high literary paradigm implanted during the colonial era. Likewise, his heterogeneous identity as American, black, and a writer of French bestsellers modeled an escape from the centripetal pull of the Mtropole. Starting with Abasse Ndiones depictions of Senegals marijuana-smoking subculture in La Vie en spirale (1982) and ending with Mongo Betis 2001 Branle-bas en noir et blanc, set in Yaound, Cameroon, Francophone African crime fiction rejected French criteria of literary success; it embraced a new postcolonial aesthetic that emphasized entertaining the reader while making a living. The Noir Atlantic demonstrates why turning to what this study calls a frivolous literary mode represented a profound shift in perspective that anticipated more recent developments such as littrature monde.