This dense and fascinating book reflects its author's impassioned conviction that discrimination has always thrived in the area of languages. It expands on the reflection started in the author's earlier book, The Languages and Literatures of Africa: the sands of Babel (2004), and offers a new focus on translation and its link to apartheid. Ricard, an embodiment of the alliance between the figure of the fieldworker and that of the scholar, also acknowledges having been inspired by Karin Barber's Anthropology of Texts, Persons, Audiences (2007), which renewed his perception of both textuality and orality.

The first chapters survey the parallel development of translation from its colonial beginnings, starting with The Bible and Pilgrim's Progress and highlighting the importance of fieldwork and progress made by philology within the past century. After that, the author surveys the production of African texts, especially novels and poetry, on the continent and by its diaspora. Chapter 6 discusses the emergence of the figure of the writer, dating back to the last years of the nineteenth century and exemplified here by Mofolo, the author of Chaka. The author then considers in turn a number of European travellers, missionaries and linguists before presenting a roll call of African writers, many of whom have combined creative writing with journalism and translation, revealing the complex networks of bilingual identities and linguistic and cultural métissages that shape African literary production and translation.

Following several important books on West Africa and Nigeria that engage with translation, this book is primarily based on literature from Eastern and Southern Africa, with a chapter on Madagascar completing the picture. Special attention is given to South Africa, a country that is well known to the author, who considers that it has played a key role in the birth of the modern world. The study focuses on literature in English and French – and beyond, on writings in African languages – using corpora built from publications and archives that give readers access to a number of unpublished works. The author highlights challenges associated with the publication of manuscripts in African languages – conflicting orthographies, late standardization and lack of local interest – before calling on scholars to use all available resources to help bring these literatures to the world's attention. Challenges faced by African authors are discussed, explaining the choice often made, since Equiano, to write in European languages in order to bypass linguistic prejudices, win personal recognition and ‘get African voices heard’ (p. 247), even though this may discourage further writing in African languages. The plea entered here for the building of a corpus of texts in African languages has already been overtaken: this is already being compiled, even though it is yet to attract the attention of translators and critics, who are still focused on Anglophone and Francophone literatures.

We know that ‘the Africa that writes is too often put away’ (p. 144). The title of the book reminds its readers of the perverse and toxic role played by South Africa's apartheid, presented as the ultimate avatar of colonialism, which led to the systematic marginalization of African writers. The author counters this organized, stifling enterprise with the translation mandate triggered by the Babel experience and confirmed at Pentecost. The best section of the book is its second part, which focuses squarely on translation and offers an in-depth reflection on this art, presented as a creative principle, a tool and a weapon meant to get languages, cultures and literatures out of their respective ghettos, with translated texts compared to a battlefield. The author later comes up with an illuminating shortcut for the compelling need for this exercise, placing African languages on a par with European languages other than English (pp. 371 ff.). This elaborate defence of translation, on the part of an author who did his bit to advance Southern African literature in France, confirms the link between translation and the promotion of African literatures. Chapter 10, entitled ‘Unnecessary translation?’, reflects on the exponential spread of the English language, as illustrated in the production of ‘a local, Anglophone … literature, published locally and which sustains its authors' (p. 291). This panorama extends from translations to authorial linguistic recreations, and one may regret at this juncture the hasty condemnation of the translation of Saro-Wiwa's Sozaboy.

Throughout the book, the author argues that translation ‘is [a form] of linguistic equality and consenting hospitality offered to others' languages' (p. 393) and presents it as a patient linguistic dialogue between European languages and African languages, the latter taking an increasingly important role in spite of the yawning time lag between original publications and subsequent translations. The mention of Mandela's contribution to his country's national reconciliation through the translation of his autobiography into all South African languages, ‘so that we can live together’ (p. 394), aptly summarizes this vast book which adds to the reflection on translation in the context of globalization.