“I was a little boy, playing round my father’s hut. How old would I have been at the time? I cannot remember…five, maybe six years old.” Thus begins The African Child, Camara Laye’s timeless paean to his childhood, languid and unforced yet engaging, narrated through the unformed yet perceptive eyes of a child as he ventures into the world and approaches manhood.

It is correct to describe the work as timeless even now, half a century after its first publication; the customs, traditions and manners that permeate the work are as relevant, as replete with dignity today as they were when the book was first written. Politeness and good humour; respect, and self pride; these are the standards that the author embraces and celebrates, even as he drifts physically further away from their roots, drawn away glacially by education and the desire for self-improvement. He accepts them and their role in his life; any supposed tensions between them and his increasingly urbane outlook even themselves out because he recognises the deeper context of these ancient codes. They do, after all, confer a profound sense of identity, of self, which elevates them beyond the strictures of the age-old argument concerning the clash between tradition and modernity.