SocialistStories حكايات اشتراكية

This short novel (104pg) by Sengalese communist writer Ousmane Sembene, is really more of a satire and parable then a normal novel, and if you don't look at it as a satire and parable (i.e. as it was intended to be perceived), then it really won't make much sense.

Xala is a very significant book, and it mocks something that we all are well acquainted with: the comprador class which is the most influential and powerful class in most of Asia, South America, and Africa. The comprador class is that class which basically took over from the european colonialists, and are now running their countries, industries, universities, military, etc, in the favor of western imperialism. They are the ones who start building McDonalds and Kentucky Chicken and Costa Coffee shops in a country where the majority of people are poor. They are the ones who build factories to assemble foreign cars, or start import companies to import foreign cars. They are the ones who run the government and do exactly as their foreign masters tell them to. They are the ones who send their children to expensive private schools and universities, or send their children abroad to study at a western universities. They are the ones who make slaves out of their fellow citizens just as the former colonial occupiers had servants and cleaners and drivers. They are the ones who live in fancy, "exclusive" areas away from where most normal people live. In essence this is the class which is responsible for the maintenance of neo-colonialism, and who keep their fellow citizens in poverty and oppressed, in the interests of western imperialism and their own selfish greed for consumption and accumulation.

The novel is focused on the polygamist "el-Hadji" Abdou Kader Beye, who at the beginning of the novel is getting married to his third wife. I think it's important to point out how Sembene links polygamy with wealth and with being a servant of imperialism, which is obviously very close to the truth (i.e. if we look in those countries where polygamy is practised, the vast majority of polygamists would fall into the comprador class). Anyway, the title of the novel is Xala, which means impotence in Wolof. And as this is a parable type novel, Sembene is obviously not just saying that that Abdou Kader himself is physically impotent, but that the comprador classes are impotent, that they control nothing, they have no room for independent action, that they have no concern for their fellow citizens, but that they are just impotent servants of imperialism. And I should mention that this is actually a very funny satire, and it should be taken as such, and it's effectiveness of course is just increased if anything because of the addition of satire. Enjoy comrades:

Download: 

Xala - Sembene Ousmane.pdf