Description
The Good dust jacket is green with illustration of Fofana, wear at corners, chipping at spine ends. A mylar dust jacket has been added. The Very Good binding is orange cloth over boards, with gold lettering and decoration. Slight bumping to corners. Front free end paper is missing. Black-and-white illustrations by Victor G. Ambrus. The binding is tight and pages are clean with some toning. The book measures 8.4″ tall x 5.8″ wide.
Stated “First American Edition”
About the book (from the dust jacket)
“The bush itself chooses in secret the ones it wishes to charge with its messages. There are some which it only confides to one man, It has been so from time immemorial: since the huntsmen build a village beside the river, and since the elephants came up with the rains through the forests of the Ivory Coast towards the great lands of the Lobi country. Tbis boy, this chosen one from the race of the bunters with filed teeth, was Fofana.”
Jean-Luc first heard of Fofana when he saw a little figure, roughly carved from a forked piece of wood, on the bench beside him in the village school. Fofana was away on a mission in the bush, the teacher explained, and the little figure was the native boys’ way of marking his place until he returned.
Jean-Luc had only recently flown out from France to join his father in a vast, remote stretch of Africa, and this was his first day at the native school. Again and again the name Fofana caught his ear. Who was this Fofana? What strange power did he possess that made his classmates speak of him with awe? And why had he so mysteriously disappeared into the forests that surrounded the settlement at Bakali:
Jean-Luc gazed wonderingly at the desk beside him. How could he know that Fofana would become the greatest friend he ever had, and would lead him into an adventure so unexpected, so tremendous, that the memory of it would remain with him all his life?
René Guillot has created one of his most memorable characters in Fofana, young chieftain of the wild Lobi tribe who knows all the age-old jungle secrets, yet speaks French flawlessly and is the best student in the school. And equally memorable is his depiction of the deep and powerful friendship that grows between Fofana and Jean-Luc after the French boy saves the young Lobi leader from a cruel bondage. Told with all M. Guillot’s understanding and poetry, and exceptionally well translated by Barbara Seccombe, FOFANA is one of the best of this author’s many fine books for young people.
About the author (from the dust jacket)
René Guillot has lived and traveled widely in Africa and India, gathering legends and native folk tales which he uses frequently in his stories for young people. He fought in World War II as a lieutenant in a battery of American howitzers, participated in the landing at Toulon and in the campaigns in Northern France and Germany. He was awarded the Legion of Honor and the Bronze Star for his services. At present he resides in Paris, where he is a Professor of Mathematics at the Lycée Condorcet.
