The narrative instances in The Suns of Independence by Ahmadou Kourouma

The African novel The Suns of Independence, written by Ivorian author Ahmadou Kourouma, is considered one of the first to study the disillusionment of the postcolonial era after the independencies in Africa. The novel is celebrated for its narrative style, inspired by the Malinke culture and language, and characterised by its oral tradition and the interaction between the narrator and his audience. Using the concepts of Gérard Genette (1983), this study analyses the following narrative instances in the novel: The narrator addressing the narratee, proverbs, comparisons and riddles, the narrator addressing a character, the procedure of question-answer, and the dream, and discusses for each of the narrative instances the relationship of the narrator towards the story, the perspective, the narrative level, and the function of the narrator. The findings show that the alternation of narrative instances gives access to more functions of the narrator. The narrative instances in which the narrator addresses the narratee or the character and the procedure of question-response create an illusion of a dialogue between narrator and narratee, thus enhances the communicative function, whereas proverbs, comparisons, and riddles, apart from connecting with the narratee, also play an important role in order to explain and evaluate developments, characters and environments. Other narrative instances, such as the dream, play an important role for the narrative function