Comrade Papa - Paperback

by Gauz' (Author), Frank Wynne (Translator)

International Booker-nominated satirist GauZ' returns with a panoramic journey into the colonization of the African interior.

Mourning the recent deaths of his parents, a young white man in nineteenth-century France joins a colonial expedition attempting to establish trading routes on the Ivory Coast and finds himself caught between factions who disagree on everything--except their shared loathing of the British.

A century later, a young Black boy born in Amsterdam gives his account, complete with youthful malapropisms, of his own voyage to the Ivory Coast, and his upbringing by his father, Comrade Papa, who teaches him to always fight "the yolk of capitalism."

In exuberant, ingenious prose, GauZ' superimposes their intertwined stories, looking across centuries and continents to reveal the long arc of African colonization.

Author Biography

GauZ' is an Ivoirian author, journalist and screenwriter. After studying biochemistry, he moved to Paris as an undocumented student, working as a security guard before returning to the Côte d'Ivoire. His debut novel, Standing Heavy, won the Prix des libraires Gibert Joseph and was followed by Comrade Papa, which won the 2019 Prix Éthiophile, and Black Manoo. Gauz is the editor-in-chief of the satirical economic newspaper News & co, and has written screenplays and documentary films.

Frank Wynne is an award-winning Irish writer and translator from French and Spanish. Over a career spanning more than 20 years, Wynne has translated a wide variety of authors, including Michel Houellebecq, Patrick Modiano, and Emiliano Monge. He has twice been awarded both the Scott Moncrieff Prize for translation from the French and the Premio Valle Inclán for translation from Spanish. Most recently, his translation of Animalia by Jean-Baptiste del Amo won the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize.