- Joseph Zobel
Joseph Zobel (born
April 26 ,1915 , inMartinique , diedJune 18 ,2006 in Alès,France ) is the author of several novels and short-stories in which social issues are at the forefront. Although his most famous novel, "La Rue Cases-Nègres ", was published some twenty years after the great authors ofNegritude published their works, Zobel was once asked if he considered himself "the novelist of Negritude?"Warner, Keith Q. 1979. Foreword: We All Had a M'man Tine. Black Shack Alley 1996.]Works
His most famous novel, "
La Rue Cases-Nègres " (often translated as "Black Shack Alley" or "Sugar Cane Alley"), was published in Paris 1950. The novel is an account of a young boy raised by his grandmother in a post-slavery, but still plantation-based, Martinique. The struggles of the impoverished cane sugar plantation workers, and the ambitions of a loving grandmother who works hard to put the main character through school are the core subject of the novel, which also describes life in a colonial society.Zobel stated that the novel was his version of Richard Wright'sBlack Boy in that they are both semi-autobiographical..The novel was adapted to the screen by
Euzhan Palcy in 1982.While La Rue Cases-Nègres is the most renowned work from Joseph Zobel, the author started his writing career in 1942 during World War Two with Diab-la (a tentative English title could be : The Devil's Garden), a socially conscious novel similar to Jacques Roumains' Masters of the Dew (published one year or more later). With Diab-la, Zobel tells the powerful story of a sugar cane plantation worker freeing himself from colonial exploitation by creating a garden in a fishermen's village of Southern Martinique.
Leaving Martinique in 1946 to pursue ethnology and drama studies in Paris, Joseph Zobel spent some years in Paris and Fontainebleau, before relocating in
Senegal by 1957. Writing a few short stories, he had a notable impact in the cultural life of French-speaking West Africa as a public radio producer.Also a noted poet and a gifted sculptor, Joseph Zobel retired in a small village of Southern France by 1974 and died in 2006.
References
External links
* [http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1810354,00.html Obituary in "The Guardian", 1 July 2006]
* [http://www.josephzobel.com Reference Website on Joseph ZOBEL] (French Language).
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