Ferdinand Oyono

Born 1929

From Ngoulemakong, South, Cameroon · Nationality: Cameroon

Quotes

“My master is thickset. His legs have great muscles like the legs of a pedlar. He is the kind of man we call ‘mahogany-trunk’ because the trunk of the mahogany tree is so strong that it never bends in a storm. I am not a storm. I am the thing that obeys.”
Houseboy, p. 22
“There are two worlds,” said Baklu, “ours is a world of respect and mystery and magic. Their world brings everything in the daylight, even the things that weren’t meant to be.”
Houseboy, p. 81
“Ah, these whites, she burst out. The dog can die of hunger beside his master’s meat. They don’t bury the goat up to the horns. They bury him altogether.”
Houseboy, p. 44
“I was alleviated by this discovery. It executed something within me … I realized I ought to never be startled of the Commandant again.”
Houseboy, p. 28
“If I talk it is because I have a mouth. If I see, it is because I have eyes. The eye goes farther and faster than the mouth, nothing stops it...”
Houseboy, p. 60

Books by Ferdinand Oyono in the order they were published, from Une vie de boy (1956) to Ecce Homo, Ferdinand Léopold Oyono (2007).