Narrengold

Luisa Francia:
Narrengold 
Löhrbach: Werner Pieper & The Grüne Kraft, 2004
129 S.
ISBN 3-922708-35-8

Luisa Francia's Novel designated in the subtitle as "Okocrimes" takes place in Mali. Alex Felder, the first narrator, is a children's book author and mourns over the death of her partner husband Otto. Otto, who is a private detective by profession, lost his life in Cairo on trying to carry out a commission. To divert her attention (from the death of her husband) as well as to help Otto's partner, Paul, who didn't want to give up the detective mission, Alex was persuaded to fly to Mali so as to help Paul with a new case: she had to search for the son of a rich French businessman, who took part in the Paris - Dakar rally and who, somewhere in northern Mali disappeared without a trace.

Reluctantly she travels to Mali and had great problems at the beginning with the harshness of the climate, the poverty and the misery on the streets. Soon however she is fascinated with the Sahel land, the warmth and friendliness of its people.

With their help, Alex finally finds the corpse of the young man in a deserted region in the middle of the desert, near a secret drilling place for uranium. As it later turns out, the drilling place belongs to Rene's father Gaillard, Alex Felder's employer. He is a scrupulous businessman, who in the pursuit of his interest in Africa, is not frightened of even death. The violent expulsion of a whole village with which the novel begins goes into his account as well as the assassination of his own son: He was killed by a German foreign legion, who guards the secret drilling depot. Alex Felder is equally taken as a prisoner, however she succeeds to escape. With the help of a Tuareg family she returns without being recognised to Bamako and clears up the case.

Luisa Francia's criminal novel offers a thrilling and entertaining view of Africa, which breaks the unobtrusive and former attached classical Africa clichés. Above all the journey to the North of the land appears as a journey of initiation into a foreign culture. The first-narrator becomes friends with her driver Mamadou and his family. She discovers the reasons for the military controls and corruption, learns the African every day and the different notion of time, the proverbial African hospitality.

The action in the novel also reflects the continuity of the colonial practices and the dominating relationship between Europe and Africa. The scrupulous imposition of European economic interest in independent Mali becomes clear through the businessman Maurice Gaillard. Leaning on the political Elite of the Land the French entrepreneur prepares the plunder of the African uranium. At the same time he takes advantage of the closure of an archaeological graving area as well as the extinction of a whole village. The exciting beginning of the book shows that only some children survive as a group of whites rolled down the simple huts with Bulldozers during a secret undertaking.

The classical form of the developing co-operation is also present in the novel. Luisa Francia describes the European and United states of American economic representatives, diplomats and developing assistants who, despite their engagements in Africa live party in deep fear and mistrust of the Africans to whom they hardly have private contact.

An alternative form of the co-operation is seen in the friendship between Alex Felder, Mamadou and his cousin Fanta: Mutual help and support leads to the clarification of the death of Rene Gaillard as well as the intrigues of his father. Simultaneously the German detective discovers therewith the murder of Fanta's family - that the forced settlement never came up for deliberations before the official courts of the land. Alex Felder on her part only survives because she is hidden by a Tuareg family from a German mercenary who searches for her everywhere except in the African milieu of the common man.

At the end of the novel the first narrator returns to Europe. However via a return visit of her new friend, Fanta to Germany, the German-African friendship and co-operation is prolonged in the future.