ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one of the most celebrated francophone novels about dictatorship, Henri Lopes's Le Pleurer-rire. Since its publication in 1982, Le Pleurer-rire has often been described as being part of a post-independence aesthetic 'renewal' of Francophone African literature. Le Pleurer-rire is indeed characterized by a complex, multi-layered narrative and a constant use of metafiction. The novel is set in a fictional African country called 'Le Pays', which is situated 'quelque part sur ce continent' and is ruled by a dictator, Bwakamabe Na Sakkade. As a result, cliches play an important role in the construction of a referent for the fictional 'Pays', and allow the reader to conjure up a mental image of it as a generic African country. The 'avertissement' may also be read as an attempt to link the novel to another literary tradition, namely that of the eighteenth-century French novel.
