The Story Archive

A Season in the Congo

Aimé Césaire · 1966 CE · Play · Caribbean · Contemporary

A beer salesman turned agitator becomes the first prime minister of the newly independent Congo and within weeks faces a mutinous army, a seceded mineral province, Belgian troops back on the ground and a United Nations force that will not act. A sanza player comments from the edge of the stage while bankers scheme in doggerel. Césaire wrote it four years after Lumumba's murder, as the middle panel of his decolonisation triptych.

Open A Season in the Congo in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Attributes

Genre
TragedyHistoricalPolitical
Theme
Power & CorruptionColonialismBetrayalFreedom vs Fate
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Tragic HeroRebel / OutlawWise Fool
Plot structure
Rise and FallChronicle
Symbol / motif
MusicThe Battlefield
Conflict
vs Societyvs Person
Mode / tone
TragicSatirical
Culture / tradition
Caribbean

Closest analogues