Calixthe 
Bayela 
D. Y the rime her second novel, Tu t'appelleras Tanga 
| J was published in 1988, the 'phenomena Beyala' 
' J (the Beyala phenomenon) had already become a 
"^s. favourite subject of discussion in the vibrant literary 
\ \ circles of Paris. After celebrating the creative gej 
I nius of the likes of Leopold Sedar Senghor, Cheikh 
J J Hamidou Kane, Sembene Ousmane and Ahmadou 
_^S Kourouma for upward of three decades, the French 
public was once again being held spellbound by 
another African writer, this rime an angry Cameroonian feminist 
named Calixthe Beyala. 
If, as is often claimed, a prophet is not without honour but in his own country, 
Pius 
Adesanmi 
can the prophetess possibly expect to fare better, especially in an Africa that is still 
largely governed by the codes of a seemingly immanent patriarchy? This Biblical 
allusion best explains the paradox of her first novel, C'est te soleil qui m'a brulee 
( 1987). While the French critical establishment celebrated the novel, critics in Beyala's 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No- 1 GLENDORA.
native Cameroon welcomed it with what Joseph Ndinda has 
called a 'conspiracy of silence'1 (my translation). When they 
overcame this initial aphasia, some of them condemned the 
novel for its provocative tone while some others accused the 
author of plagiarism, triggering off a crisis of originality that has 
dogged Beyala's heels ever since. 
Ndinda reports that during an interview she granted 
Radio Cameroon in 1 9892 , the interviewing journalist turned 
the session into an interrogation, accusing Beyala outright of 
lifting the title of her first novel from one of the works of Aime 
Cesaire. Fortunately for the embattled writer, it turned out to be 
that the journalist forgot' to read the novel's epigraph which 
clearly indicates that the title was taken from the first chapter of 
the Song of Solomon in the Bible. 
With the vapidity of this first accusation of plagiarism 
established, Beyala went on to publish other works in rapid 
succession: Seul le diable le savait (1990); Le petit prince de 
Belleville (1 992), Maman a un amant[ 1993), Asseze I'Africaine 
(1994). And in her desire to give a discursive anchorage to the 
pressing thematic concerns of her fiction, she published the 
disturbing epistolary essay, Lettre d'une Africaine a ses soeurs 
occidentales (1995). 
The unbridled transgressivity of her quasi-pornographic 
diction and her anarchic battle against what she often refers to 
as 'dictature des couilles' (dictatorship of the balls) were all 
Beyala needed to become the most visible African writer in the 
French media in recent times. And this alone should have made 
her a lot more circumspect in the handling of her literary 
influences. 
Already in 1 992, the publication of her fourth novel, 
Le petit prince de Belleville had plunged her neckdeep into 
another controversy of plagiarism. The American clown and 
writer, Howard Buten, announced to the world that about fourty 
passages in Beyala's novel were copied from a successful book 
of his which had even been adapted for the cinema by Jean- 
Pierre Carasso. As the controversy raged on, the influential 
French satirical newspaper ie CanardEnchamealsoannounced 
that it had discovered about ten 'careless borrowings' in Le petit 
prince de Belleville. The newspaper accused Beyala of lifting 
those elements from Fantasia chez les ploucs, a detectve novel 
by Charles Williams. 
Beyala's defence at that time was that those 'careless 
borrowings' must have crept in unconsciously while she wrote. 
The defence in itself is an uncomfortable rehash of Christopher 
Okigbo's arguments while acknowledging the fact of his 
sources. In Okigbo's words, 'it is surprising how many lines of 
my Limits I am not sure are mine and yet do not know whose lines 
they were originally. But does it matter?'3. 
Unfortunately, Beyala's explanations did not convince 
Mar»-Madeleine Magueur, head of the panel set up to look into 
the allegations. Consequently on May 7, 1 996, Beyala was 
African Quarterly 
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Vol. 2/No. 1 GLENDORA 
found guilty of 'partially copying' Howard Buten'-s novel. The 
novelist and her publishers, Albin Michel, were each asked to 
pay 30,000 FF as damages to Buten and Carasso. The panel 
also ordered Beyala and her publishers to expunge all the 
disputed parts from Le petit prince de Belleville. Reacting to this 
setback, Beyala waxed philosophical: 'I have decided to let the 
dead bury the dead. These things are of no importance and 
cannot impede my work'4 (my translation). 
She thus continued undeterred with her writing and 
media campaigns. And in 1996, Beyala's seventh novel, Les 
honneurs perdus [Lost Glories, my translation) was published 
by Albin Michel. On 24 October 1996, the Academie Francaise 
awarded the novel its prestigious Grand Prix du roman worth 
a staggering 100,000 FF. The importance of this event can 
better be understood against the backdrop of the fact that 
Beyala became the first black writer, male or female, to win the 
said prize. But the euphoria that greeted this unprecedented 
achievement in the whole of Francophone Africa was tragically 
bound to be shortlived. In a cruel ironic twist, the award 
winning novel played out the semantic import of its ominous 
title. On 24 November 1996 - exactly a month after the prize 
was announced - Pierre Assouline, a journalist with the literary 
magazine Lire accused the new laureate on television of 
'flagrantly plagiarising' Ben Okri's Tifie Famished Road which 
incidentally won the Booker Prize in 1991. Expectedly, this 
allegation resulted in the worst literary scandal in 1 996. 
To prove his case, Assouline proceeded to do a 
televised page by page comparison of the novels. The first 
instance concerns a fight between a man and a woman in both 
novels. In Les honneurs perdus, the scene is described thus: 
Sa femme ne I'ecouta pas. Elle I'attrapa par le pantalon et 
le trama. II tenta de se liberer de cette poigne de fer qui, en 
plus du pantalon, aggripait ses testicules (27). 
(His wife was not listening to him. She caught him by the 
pants and dragged him about. He tried to free himself from 
this iron grip on his pants and, above all, his testicles) (my 
translation). 
This can now be compared with Okri's description of a 
similar event in The Famished Road: 
The woman stopped listening. When we went past the 
crowd we saw that she was dragging him about, yanking 
him around by the pants. He kept trying to free himself from 
her masterful grip on his trousers, a grip which encompassed 
his private parts (36). 
As the fight continues between the woman and the man, 
Beyala's novel begins to read dangerously like the French 
translation of The Famished Road. Afew more comparisons are 
necessary to buttress this delicate assertion. In tes honneurs 
perdus, one reads:
Apres mi He exploits des doigts avec lesquels le docteurpharmacien 
essaya de se liberer de I'emprise de la grosse, 
la rage I'habita et ilse mitaproferer des injures que personne 
ne comprenait... Puis, a la stupefaction de tous, il gifla sa 
femme. Quelques hommes se precipiterent a la rescousse 
mais la grosse les prit de vitesse. Elle empoigna I'entre-jambe 
du pharmacien. II cria et sans lui laisser le temps de reagir, 
elle le souleva sur ses epaules et I'envoya valser dans la 
poussiere (27). 
(After trying a thousand tricks with his fingers in order to free 
himself from the fat woman's grip, rage took hold of the 
doctor-pharmacist and he began to scream insults which no 
one understood... Then, to everyone's surprise, he slapped 
his wife Some men rushed to the rescue but the woman was 
faster. She grabbed the pharmacist's crotch. He screamed 
and, without giving him the time to act, she lifted him on her 
shoulders and flung him into the dust) (my translation}. 
In The Famished Road, the story reads thus: 
He tried to prise her fingers apart and when that failed he 
took to hitttng her hands, screaming insults at everyone... 
Then, he pounced on her, lashing at her face. Dad started 
towards him, but his rescue attempt was cut short. The 
madame grabbed the bad loser's crotch and he screamed so 
loud that the crowd fell silent. Then, with a practised grunt, 
she lifted him on her shoulders, turned him round once, 
showing his mightiness to the sky, and dumped him savagely 
on the hard earth (36-37). 
Pierre Assouline went on to reveal other 'strange coincidences' 
between Beyala's novel and The Famished Road. One 
such coincidence borders on the distribution of essential com- 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 GLENDORA .
modified by vote-seeking politicians to the gullible electorate in 
an African village. The only difference being that while Okri's 
politicians distribute powdered milk, Beyala's men opt for 
maize. 
Interestingly, the international hoopla which greeted 
Assouline's revelations has had a diversionary consequence, 
preventing as it were further comparison of Beyala's text with the 
works of other writers to determine if there are other sentential 
coincidences. Using Assouline's criterion as the basis of such a 
comparative process, I have discovered that it is possible to 
establish at least one instance of uncomfortable similarity 
between les honneurs perdus and Toni Morrison's Song of 
Solomon.
In both novels, there is a situation in which some 
socially handicapped, coloured characters - African Americans 
in Song of Solomon and Parisian black immigrants in Les 
honneurs perdus - are being mentally prepared for the tough life 
of material deprivation they are bound to face in decidedly 
racist contexts. Such characters are made to realise that some 
things will for ever remain beyond their reach owing to their 
inferior position in the social stratum. In Song of Solomon, 
Railroad Tommy drives home this pointto a terrified Guitar and 
Milkman thus: 
he coincidence is obvious enough. And it becomes even 
more dangerous when the comparison is done between 
Beyala's novel and the French translation of Song of 
Solomon. What remains to be determined are the modalities 
of its occurence. It will also be necessary to determine Use 
precise point at which an author's use of influences becomes 
inadmissible 
Who's teasing? I'm telling him the truth. He ain't going to 
have it. Neither one of 'em going to have it. And I'll tell you 
something else you not going to have. You not going to have 
no private coach with four velvet chairs that swivel around in 
one place whenever you want 'em to. No. And you notgoing 
to have your own special toilet and your own special-made 
eight-foot bed either. And a valt tanda cook and a secretary 
to travel with you and do everytt, ; •-< you say... And you not 
going to have no breakfast tray brcug 'v in to you early in the 
morning with a red rose on it and two warm croissants and 
a cup of chocolate. Nope. Never. (59-60). 
In tes honneurs perdus, the heroine, SaTda, is jilted by her 
boyfriend when he discovers the 'abnormality' of her being a 
virgin even at the approach of her menopause. She decides to 
go on a vengeance mission and is apprehended in the street by 
a sympathetic black immigrant who feels compelled to offer her 
a piece of advice: 
GLENDORA. 
more dangerous when the comparison is done between Beyala's 
novel and the French translation of Song of Solomon. What 
remains to be determined are the modalities of its occurence. It 
will also be necessary to determine the precise point at which an 
author's use of influences becomes inadmissible. For apart from 
the instances of syntactic propinquity between Les honneurs 
perdus, The Famished Road and Song of Solomon as evidenced 
in the passages cited above, other situations exist in Beyala's 
novel which enable the informed reader to establish links 
between her text and those of some older writers in the French 
world. 
In Les honneurs perdus, the story has the autobiographical 
tinge which characterises most of Beyala's stories. 
Before emigrating to Paris, the heroine lives out the drama of her 
life in Couscousville, a slum which is in fact the fictional 
equ.valent of New Bed, the slum in which Beyala spent the better 
part of her underprivileged childhood in Douala, Cameroon. 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 
V a des tonnes de trues qui sontpas pour les immigres dans 
ce pays. T'as pas I'amour de ton homme mats t'as pas non 
plus de domestiques qui te servent au lit. Et t'as pas non plus 
de belles bagnoles electrifiees a I'interieur, et t'as pas non 
plus le droit de voter, d'ailleurs, oublie ca, tu connaTtras 
jamais; et t'as pas non plus de voyage en premiere classe 
avec des hotesses qui font tes quatre volontes et tu vas pas 
pour autant tuer la terre entiere parce que t'as pas ca (353- 
354). 
Since the passage comes in the unrefined street French 
mostly used by Beyala's characters, it is necessary to translate 
it into the unrefined American street English of Morrison's 
characters so as to put the coincidence in proper perspective. 
Hence, Beyala's passage above will read thus in American: 
{There's hundreds of things that ain't for immigrants in this 
country. You ain't got your man's love but you ain't got no 
servants to serve you in bed too. And you ain't got no 
beautiful jalopies with electrified interiors either; and you 
ain't got voting rights; besides, forget that! You never going 
to have it; and you ain't going to travel first class with 
hostesses doing everything you want; and you wont kill the 
whole world because you ain't got all that) (my translafionj. 
The coincidence is obvious enough. And it becomes even
Using Beyala's emblematic realism, the first person 
narrator gives a vivid description of the squalor of Couscousville 
in the first part of the novel. But the tone of the description and 
the nauseating images of rust and decay immediately begin to 
cast the reader's mind on Aime Cesaire's somewhat similar 
description of the Antillean slums in the opening pages of his 
classic Cahier d'un retour au pays natal. Furthermore, the 
epidemic which hits the whole of Couscousville after the 
inhabitants have consumed the bad maize distributed by 
politicians and the manner in which the afflicted populace and 
the government react to the issue easily remind one of a similar 
case in Albert Camus Algerian setting of Oran in his novel, La 
peste. 
For sure, these points are not strong enough to be 
considered as plagiarism. At least, one cannot pin down near 
syntactic homologies between Beyala's text and those of Cesaire 
and Camus. But at the purely situational level, the resemblances 
are striking enough. This brings us to a few thorny questions to 
which literary practitioners have seemingly been unable to 
provide palpable answers through the years, a failure which 
wo writer3 'lift' sentences from unacknowledged sources. One is 
J I condemned by the international literary community while the other 
receives accolades for being an 'original imitator1! Are ditferrent seta of 
rules to be applied to different authors when it comes to plagiarism? 
H Is perhaps this indeterminate state of affairs that has given Calixthe 
Beyala enough room to manoeuvre in her defence 
has had serious negative implications for the global literary 
process: atwhat precise point does plagiarism occurin litrerature? 
Are there universally acceptable criteria for determining that 
offence? 
The pertinence of these questions becomes clearer 
when the fact is considered that the production of literature in all 
cultures has had a very long history of textual coincidences and 
interpenetrations which can actually undermine the authenticity 
of a monumental textual corpus the moment any hard and fast 
rule of originality is taken into consideration. 
The works of French classical tragedians constitute a 
good case in point. Racine and Corneille have never denied 
their indebtedness to antecedent Greek and Roman tragedians 
like Sophocles, Euripides and Plutarch. And, of course, La 
Fontaine's fables read like French translations of the fables of 
A\sop in several instances. Indeed, if the same nebulous rules 
that are now threatening to destroy Beyala's career are to be 
applied to the works of these great writers, France is sure to have 
a considerable part of her literary patrimony seriously undermined 
on the grounds of 'partial plagiarism'. 
the deceased Congolese playwright and novelist, Sony Labou 
Tansi, despite the incontrovertible fact of his indebtedness to 
Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Indeed, the Francophone critical 
establishment has come to consider La vie et demie, the novel 
that placed Labou Tansi on the international literary map, as an 
African version of One Hundred Years of Solitude and The 
Autumn of the Patriarch, two Marquezian masterpieces. 
It is even arguable that Labou Tansi is far more 
indebted to Marquez than Beyala can ever hope to be to Okri 
or Morrison. Several passages in to vie et demie can be traced 
to One Hundred Years of Solitude. Even some of Marquez' 
characters are implanted in Labou Tansi's text with negligible 
modifications. In a curious article, 'Entre le renouveau et la 
modernite: vers de nouveaux modeles?'5,lDaniel-Henri Pageaux 
actually compares passages from Marquez and Labou Tansi in 
exactly the same way as Pierre Assouline does with regard to 
Beyala and Okri. After revealing a welter of resemblances 
between One Hundred Years of Solitude and La vie et demie, 
Pageaux concludes by celebrating what he calls Labou Tansi's 
'original imitation' of Marquez! 
Vol. Z/No. 1 GLENDORA 
Closer to us in Africa, instances abound in the past of 
accusations and counter-accusations of plagiarism which were 
mostly resolved in a manner that is anything but tidy. Thus were 
opportunities which could have been exploited to resolve the 
tricky question of what actually constitutes literary plagiarism 
wasted. Tbe case of Camara Laye readily comes to mind. The 
author of The African Child was once accused of plagiarising 
Kafka and Camus in another novel of his, The Radiance of the 
King. The Malian Yambo Ouologuem was also violently accused 
of plagiarising Andre Schwartz-Bart's [e dernier des 
justes in his highly polemical novel, Le devoir de violence. 
Despite the allegation, Ouologuem's novel went ahead to win 
the Prix Renaudot in 1968. And in the 1970s, our own Chinua 
Achebe was accused by Charles Nnolim of having lifted the 
material for his Arrow of God from a tiny historical pamphlet, 
The History of Umuchu, purportedly written by a retired corporal 
of the Nigerian police force. 
Interestingly, while Calixthe Beyala and all the other 
mentioned writers have all suffered accusations of plagiarism 
and the attendant embarrassment, the same cannot be said of 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts
Pageaux's case is not unrepresentative of the 
celebratory reactions to Labou Tansi's 'original imitation' of 
Marquez by most critics of Francophone African literature. And 
this brings us back to the questions raised earlier on about the 
precise meaning of plagiarism in literature: two writers 'lift' 
sentences from unacknowledged sources. One is condemned 
by the international literary community while the other receives 
accolades for being an 'original imitator'! Are differrent sets of 
rules to be applied to different authors when it comes to 
plagiarism? 
It is perhaps this indeterminate state of affairs that has 
given Calixthe Beyala enough room to manoeuvre in her 
defence. First, she lashed out at her critics from a feminist and 
racial standpoint, accusing them of misogyny and racial hatred. 
In her opinion, the fact that she is the first black person (and 
above all a woman) to win the prestigious prize is a blow on the 
ego of the white male establishment. But she later shifted her 
argument to the site of the traditional confrontations between 
Africa and the West. Equating the attacks on her with the 
customary Western denigration of Africa, she declared heatedly: 
'We are going to fight for that Africa and they should leave 
us alone" (my translation). 
The most dramatic twist in Beyala's defence came on 
26 November 1 996 when she sent an eight-page fax message 
to Pierre Assouline claiming that it is Okri who is in fact guilty 
of plagiarising her first novel, C'est le soleil qui m'a brulee! Says 
she:'The similarities between C'est le soleil qui m'a brulee and 
The Famished Road are legion. Here, we are not talking of one, 
two or three sentences relating the same events but we are 
talking about a book which drew its inspiration entirely from my 
novel17 (my translation). 
Les honneurs 
perdus 
GLENDORA, 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 
Beyala's prevarications have not helped matters. It 
hasevengiven heraccusersgroundstodismiss heras unserious. 
In the words of Assouline: 'In that case, if one day a book of Elie 
Wiesel is critiqued, he will accuse us of anti-semitism; if a puzzle 
is found in a book of the Dalai Lama, he will say that it is primary 
anti-Buddhism... I am not going to be drawn into this debate 
because after explaining that you are not racist, she will tell you 
that you don't like women!'6 (my translation). As the hue 
gradually begins to die down, all indications point to the fact 
that the Beyala episode may pass away, like all the already 
mentioned antecedents, leaving the controversy of what constitutes 
plagiarism largely unresolved. And for as long as this 
remains the case, one cannot but agree with Brice Ahounou that 
"the whole of African literary creation becomes questionable" 
(my translation).GR 
NOTES 
1 Ndinda, Joseph. Ecriture et discours feminin au 
Cameroun: trois generations de romancieres' in Notre 
Libmirie, no. 118 (July-September, 1994): p.7. 
2 Ibid. 
3
4 
Okigbo, Christopher. 'Transition Conference 
Questionnaire' in Transition, 11, 5 (July-August, 1962): p.12. 
Quoted by Brice Ahounou in his article, 'Calixthe Beyala: 
au cceur d'un nouveau scandale' in Africa International, no. 
300 (December-January, 1997): P.78. 
5
h
7 
See Notre Libmirie, no. 78(January-March, 1985): pp.31-35. 
Brice Ahounou, op. cit. 
Ibid. 
" Ibid. 
GRAND PRIX 
DU ROMAN 
DE L'ACADEMIE 
FRANCAISE