The Old Man and the Medal

It is a satire of the relationship between the colonial matters (France) and the Africans they occupied. A vivid picture is painted of the psychological warfare that was launched against the Africans and the resulting consequences. The policy of assimilation adopted by the French tried the make Africans French. To become French the Africans had to empty themselves of their Africaness and replace it with the French ways. This resulted in the class of cultures and a lot of undesired consequences. At the end, the colonized ended up as the victims in their own land, while the colonizers looted and pillaged the colonized. This is evident in the climax of the story when an occasion is organized to award a medal to the main character's in the novel, but he woke up in jail the next day because he got drunk and whoever arrested him that night forgot about the medal that was awarded to him during the day. What a tragedy? It is an interesting read and I recommend it.

I was hoping to get the digital edition of this novel for class to make use of the search option. However, the book was unsearchable. For some reason, and I think it may have to do with how the book is formatted, as it is considered a "digital textbook," when highlighted the words would be incapable of being defined because they showed up as a mixture of numbers and letters. So, after noticing that, I realized that the search option was buggy and words that were clearly on the page, did not show up in the search.Amazon, please fix this. As a student, the lack of a search option in the digital version is a major deal breaker. That is my only reason for even considering purchasing a digital book.Thanks.

I am only into the 3rd chapter of this book and find the translation to be horribly done. It makes it difficult to read as you would have to read some sentences multiple times to make sense of what the author (or should I say translator) is trying to convey.

Excellent exposé. More of such work needed. Such text needs re-introduction to schools and colleges. Great writing. Needs more publicity.

Had read hard cover beforein French and still same interesting story. 4 stars because of the very small prints that I was unable to enlarge.