Library Weekly

On 25 October 2001, Cameroonian writer, journalist, poet, novelist, and playwright René Philombe, pen name of Philippe Louis Ombedé died in Yaoundé at the age of 70. He was one of the founders of the Association of Cameroonian Poets and Writers (APEC) of which he was the secretary for 20 years. He received the Mottart Prize from the Académie Française and the Fonlon-Nichols prize from the African Literature Association.

René Philombe was born on 13 November 1930 in the city of Ngaoundéré, where his father worked in the colonial administration as a writer-translator. He was expelled from the high school in Yaoundé at the age of 16 for political reasons. He continued as an autodidact and followed correspondence courses, among others at the school of arts and sciences in Paris.

In the beginning of the 1950s, Philombe attended the Police Academy in Yaoundé and became a police officer in Douala. In 1955, struck by poliomyelitis which left his legs paralyzed for life, he had to leave the police service and devoted himself to writing. He founded a French-language newspaper and an Ewondo-language newspaper and he started to apply himself to Cameroonian literature which would result years later, in 1984, in the publication of the monumental book, 'The Cameroonian book and its authors: a contribution to the literary history of the United Republic of Cameroon from 1895 to the present day with a bio-bibliographic record of the authors'.

Many of his patriotic literary and political activities earned him long periods in prison, in spite of his infirmities. In 1972, Philombe created his own publishing house 'Semences Africaines', which allowed him to edit his own texts for a large part which had remained unpublished until then.

Philombe's published works include 'Sola, ma chérie' (1966; “Sola, My Darling”), a novel about seemingly unjust marriage customs; 'Un Sorcier blanc à Zangali' (1970; “A White Sorcerer in Zangali”), a novel about the effect of a missionary’s clash with the colonial administration in a small village; 'Choc anti-choc' (1978), “a novel made of poems”; and 'Africapolis' (1978), a tragedy.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Selected publications

Publications by René Philombe

Timeline of Cameroonian novelists via DBpedia and Wikidata