Road to Europe: A Novel

Oyono’s third novel is the bittersweet, first-person story of Aki Barnabas, a young Cameroonian scholar who seeks to become “someone” by using the rules of the colonial system to his personal advantage.

Failing in his nearly ten-year effort to win a scholarship to Paris, sacrificing his very self in a futile quest for prestige, Barnabas becomes lost at home and unwanted abroad. A victim of his own delusional thinking, he achieves a measure of success only after he acknowledges the self- loathing that fueled his attempt to escape his Africanness. First published in French in 1960.