Bound to Violence

Yambo Ouologuem is one of the most radical of contemporary African writers. His only published novel to date, Bound to Violence (1968), is a powerful, vituperative, and controversial assault on Islam and Arabs. It presents Islam as a vicious, destabilizing, and culturally alienating system whose unholy alliance with state power has resulted over the years in barbaric slave raids, the creation of male-chauvinist harems, and the ruthless exploitation of the masses and the countryside. In the novel, Ouologuem reveals a commitment to the crusade for the total decolonization of the African mind by Islam as well as Christianity. He views the two as antithetical alien religions whose dogmas inhibit African self-expression and freedom.

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