Blackout

Aquin's second novel was somewhat different from his first, though the concept of separatism comes in, not so much as a philosophical or political idea but mainly because the two main characters were involved in separatism. It is (deliberately) something of a mishmash. It starts in 1966, six years after the Ivory Coast had obtained its independence from France and one year before de Gaulle's vive le Québec libre speech, which is mentioned in the book. We start off with a letter written by an Ivorian pharmacist and separatist called Olympe Ghezzo-Quénum. (I do not know whether this is deliberate but it immediately reminded me of the Beninese novelist Olympe Bhêly-Quenum.) Ghezzo-Quénum lives in Grand-Bassam. His somewhat rambling letter is written to a Quebec separatist called Pierre X Magnant (we later learn that the X stands for Xavier). He takes ten pages to get to the point -- that he would like a copy of a speech made by Magnant on separatism.