Write a response for Cheik Hamidou Kane’s The Ambiguous Adventure.

Discuss the following three ideas:

Self-Referentiality: How is Kane’s text self-referential? In other words, how is this a written discourse on writing itself? How does the text reveal the mechanisms of its own construction? Discuss the significance of reading a novel that is about writing. Notice how the text begins with the protagonist reading and reciting the Koran. How does this help our identification with the main character, given that we are both “readers?” Consider how Chapter 7 is an embedded letter. Address possible connections to the self-referentiality of writing in the journal entries of an earlier text: Bèti’s The Poor Christ of Bomba.

Patrilineality: How does the boy protagonist of the Ambiguous Adventure (Samba Diallo) exhibit some of the same ruptures of patrilineality that are experienced by the protagonists of the Poor Christ of Bomba (Denis) and the Suns of Independence (Fama)? All are the end-of-the-line of their male lineages. All have multiple fathers. All face tragic career and educational choices? What accounts for these consistencies? [Remember to avoid summary. Analyze!]

The End: How does the protagonist die in Chapter 9? What takes place in Chapter 10 after the death of the protagonist? How does this explain the novel’s title? What is “the ambiguous experience?”