25/365: Tropic Moon by Georges Simenon

Tropic Moon by Georges Simenon Translated from: French Rating: ★★★★ Publication Date: January 1, 1933 Genre: crime, translated fiction Pages: 134 ReRead?: No Project: Project 365 A young Frenchman, Joseph Timar, travels to Gabon carrying a letter of introduction from an influential uncle. He wants work experience; he wants to see the world. But in the oppressive heat and glare of the equator, Timar doesn't know what to do with himself, and no one seems inclined to help except Adèle, the hotel owner's wife, who takes him to bed one day and rebuffs him the next, leaving him sick with desire. But then, in the course of a single night, Adèle's husband dies and a black servant is shot, and Timar is sure that Adèle is involved. He'll cover for the crime if she'll do what he wants. The fix is in. But Timar can't even begin to imagine how deep. In Tropic Moon , Simenon, the master of the psychological novel, offers an incomparable picture of degeneracy and corruption in a colonial outpost.

My NYRB Classic of the week!

I’ve read a number of the Maigret mysteries by Georges Simenon, but didn’t realize until recently that he wrote what he considered to be more serious fiction, or romans dur (hard novels), as opposed to the romans policier. I’m reminded a bit of Graham Greene here, who also wrote what he called entertainments as opposed to the more literary works that he called novels.

I can’t say that I enjoyed this book, because it is very dark. But Simenon is such a compelling writer that it was extremely effective and immersive. When the main character, Timar, arrives in Gabon in the early 1930’s, I could very nearly feel the oppressive heat. The descriptions of the hotel in Libreville are extremely vivid. The smells, the sensations, the insects biting in spite of the mosquito netting, the scorching sun are all evoked.

Simenon is no apologist for colonialism. He does not pull his punches about the exploitation of the native African population. With a few very limited exceptions, all of the characters in this novel are white: Timar, the young Frenchman, Adele, the young wife, and later widow, of the hotel owner, all of the local government officials. None of them, including Timar, are particularly likeable, and they all dehumanize and exploit the natives.

Apparently Simenon so riled up the French colonial authorities with this novel that when he sought to return to French colonial Africa in 1936 he was refused a visa.

The ending of this book is opaque and, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t entirely understand it. There is no justice here, though – in order to find justice, the Maigret novels are the ones to read.