Before 1960
It simply doesn't seem possible to talk about Togolese literature in terms of the year in which the country as we know it today finally gained its independence, for the land - beyond the borders invented by man - retains its roots, which always spring up again, in the image of the country's name, which derives from an Ewe word: togodo (beyond the river bank). This language fascinated missionaries such as Diedrich Westermann, born in Baden (Germany) in 1875 and sent to Togo, where he devoted himself fully to its study - publishing a two-volume dictionary in 1905 and 1906, and a grammar the following year - to the point of abandoning his ecclesiastical duties to become a full-time linguist and occupy the chair of African cultures at the University of Berlin. His work was fundamental in that it enabled Ewe to be much better documented than many other African languages. Nevertheless, he was not the first to take an interest, as Paul Wiegräbe (1900-1996), also a missionary in Togo from 1926 to 1939, pointed out in his book Gott spricht Ewe(God speaks Ewe). In fact, he mentioned Bernhard Schlegel (1827-1859), who was sent to Togo for a very specific purpose: to translate the Bible, an undertaking that - it is said - took no less than half a century, with vocabulary problems complicating the task. The most famous example is undoubtedly the difficulty of finding a correspondence for the stable where Christ was born, in a country that was devoid of them, and which was replaced by the equivalent of "where horses sleep", animals that the missionaries had imported with them, even if these soon succumbed to the tropical climate. Anecdote aside, the Ewe language was reborn in writing at the time of independence, notably in the works of Kwasi Fiawoo and Sam Obianim - both of Ghanaian nationality, although this is not really important since they are language brothers with the Togolese, and Ewe is still used today, particularly in Lomé. The former wrote La Cinquième Lagune in 1937, the latter Amegbetoa in 1949. In addition to this original heritage, there is of course the oral tradition, which has hardly been transcribed here but has continued to spread, both within the family and in the wider cultural sphere, thanks to the Festival National des Griots (FESNAG) created at the beginning of the 21st century.
It was not in Togo that the man who can be considered the country's first writer and, more generally, one of Africa's first French-language writers was born, yet it was in this country that he spent most of his life, becoming a civil servant in the information services after independence. Félix Couchoro was born in 1900 in Dahomey, later Benin, and died in Lomé in 1968. A teacher, he published novels of morality in newspapers, both serialized and otherwise, notably in the daily Togo-Presse, but also in the colonial newspaper La Dépêche Africaine, which undoubtedly ensured him sufficient notoriety to see his first novel published in Paris in 1929 under the title L'Esclave. The story depicts the life of Mawalouawé, an eight-year-old slave bought by Komlangan, who raised him as one of his own children... until, at the time of inheritance, unspoken rivalries and a forbidden love affair caused the family to explode. Couchoro would prove particularly prolific from the 1940s onwards, publishing some thirty works(Amour de féticheuse, Drame d'amour à Anecho, L'Héritage, cette peste, etc.) without ever winning back the French capital. Although not considered a committed writer, he did dare to step into the highly sensitive breach opened between Africa and the West, for which he was more or less criticized, all the more so for his choice of language. David Ananou (1917-2000) should also be added to this first literary generation, with Le Fils du fétiche, published by Editions La Savane in 1955 and reissued in 1971. Through the story of Sodji, his wives and offspring, he parodies animism or praises Christianity, as the case may be. Here again, the frontier is porous and the debate undoubtedly political..
Independence and theater
From the 1960s to the 1980s, the period opened up to a number of writers who continued to explore the novel, while theater also began to make its mark. This was the generation of Yves-Emmanuel Dogbé (1939-2004), poet and essayist, who in 1979 became a publisher by founding Akpagnon, as well as that of Victor Aladji, born in 1940, who published widely, including Akossiwa mon amour in 1971 and L'Équilibriste in 1972. In the first novel, he gives the village he describes a real local color, notably by using words in Ewe, and above all tackles the feeling of love, which was not at all obvious at the time. In the second, he became more critical of the post-colonial regime, imagining a sort of Togolese Robin Hood. It was also around this time that Tété-Michel Kpomassie wrote an autobiographical story with an evocative title, L'Africain du Groenland, in which he recounts the long journey that would lead him to fulfill his dream. Prefaced by Jean Malaurie, the famous explorer and founder of Plon's "Terre humaine" collection, the book became Togo's first bestseller and is still available from Arthaud. Last but not least, we should mention Pyabélo Chaold Kouly (1943-1995), who was preoccupied with pedagogy and education, not only through essays and children's books, but also through the adaptation of his own novel Le Missionnaire de Pessaré Kouloum into a comic strip, the first of its kind in Togo. Her task was never easy, and she often had to resort to self-publishing, but she undoubtedly paved the way for literature for young readers and for female authors, notably with her novel Souvenirs de douze années passées en République fédérale d'Allemagne (1975), in which she tackled the issue of discrimination head-on.
Sénouvo Agbota Zinsou, born in 1946 in Lomé, was a pioneer in the field of theater. He co-founded his first troupe at the age of 22 and was awarded the grand prize at the Inter-African Theatrical Competition in Lagos just four years later, for his play On joue la comédie, which toured internationally. He also drew inspiration from a genre that had been developing in Ghana since the 1930s: the concert party, in which musicians and characters took to the stage for several hours at a time, with nothing to envy either vaudeville or commedia dell'arte. Very popular, these plays, often performed in vernacular languages, were full of audacity. This freedom of tone, sometimes critical, worried the governments in power, and was reflected in the texts of Zinsou who, despite the high office he held (director of the Troupe nationale) and his many successes, was forced, like so many others, into exile, which did not prevent him from continuing to practice his art. At least two of his works - La tortue qui chante and Le Médicament - can be found in Hatier International's "Monde noir" collection.
New voices
Despite these attempts at oppression, freedom of speech had been definitively liberated, as demonstrated by a new wave of writers all the more preoccupied with social issues. On the women's side, Lolonyo M'Baye published Étrange héritage under the pseudonym Ami Gad in 1985. Ten years later, Jeannette Ahonsou was awarded the Prix France-Togo for Une longue histoire. Twenty years later, Christiane Ekué founded Graines de pensées. The Beninese Jean-Jacques Dabla, who lived in Togo before leaving to teach in France, signed his name Towaly to the short stories he published, in which his sometimes disenchanted vision of the world was universal. But it was three writers - all born between 1960 and 1966, and all winners of the Grand Prix littéraire d'Afrique noire - who definitively gave Togolese literature its letters of nobility: Sami Tchak, Kossi Efoui and Kangni Alem.
With a doctorate in sociology and a degree from the Sorbonne, Sami Tchak honed his writing skills with essays inspired by his travels(La Prostitution à Cuba, L'Harmattan, 1999), before causing a few teeth to grind with a first novel that was deemed at best unclassifiable, at worst disturbing, if not the opposite. In Place des Fêtes (Gallimard, 2001), an incisive diatribe, an anonymous narrator, whose only identity is that of a black man born in France of African parents, shares his views on everything he dislikes. While everyone gets their comeuppance, and the whole is punctuated by a few coarse words, Sami Tchak's career was well underway, and would go on to be published by the prestigious Mercure de France(Le Paradis des puots in 2006, Filles de Mexico in 2008, Al Capone le Malien in 2011). Kossi Efoui was certainly a provocateur as well, his political protest having cost him exile to France. Having cut his teeth as a playwright, he went on to become a rather demanding but truly fascinating novelist, as demonstrated by his Cantique de l'acacia, published by Seuil in 2017. Kangni Alem also began his career in the theater, making his mark with his stagings of Bertolt Brecht and his own texts (including Chemins de croix, which won him the Prix Tchicaya U'Tamsi in 1990). Since Cola cola jazz (éditions Dapper, 2002), he has been celebrated for his short stories(Un rêve d'albatros, Gallimard, 2006) and novels(Esclaves, Lattès, 2009; Atterrissage, Graine de Pensées, 2016). Théo Ananissoh, published by Gallimard, from Lisahohé in 2005 to Perdre le corps in 2021, is another of these voices. A new generation born in the 1970s and 1980s, such as playwright Gustave Akakpo (éditions Lansman) and novelist Edem Awumey(Port-Mélo 2006, Gallimard; Les Pieds sales 2009, Seuil; Explication de la nuit 2014, éditions Du Boréal...), seems to be taking over.
