ABSTRACT
Bessora was born in 1968 in Belgium. Her father is from Gabon, while her mother is from Switzerland. She started her career as a writer at the age of 29, and her novel Petroleum was published in 2004. In this novel, Bessora transposes the Medea myth to the former French colony Gabon (which gained its independence from France only in 1960) and into the oil business, represented by the French oil company Elf. Médée is a geologist who is working on an oil tanker called “Ocean Liberateur” in search of a new oil field off the coast of Gabon (oil remains one of the most important resources in Gabon today). Jason is the cook on the ship with whom she has fallen in love. The Golden Fleece is the oil. The plot is very complex: a detective story intertwined with folktales from Gabon and the complicated relationships of the different characters which bear autobiographical traits. Bessora uses the Medea myth as a tool to explore postcolonial issues such as hybridity, assimilation, neo-colonialism, and the position of expatriates, but also in search of her own identity as a mixed-race woman.
