His major work, Le Devoir de violence (Published in English as Bound to Violence) was published in 1968 by Editions du Seuil. It was met with wide critical acclaim, winning the Prix Renaudot that very year, the first African author to do so. Ouloguem became a celebrity, and Le Monde called him one of "the rare intellectuals of international stature presented to the world by Black Africa", comparing him to Leopold Sedar Senghor. It was translated into English (Bound to Violence) by Ralph Manheim in 1971.
Ouloguem's novel is harshly critical of African nationalism, and "reserves its greatest hostility for the violence Africans committed against other Africans". Some critics felt that the praise and initial response of "authenticity" for the novel, which is often historically inaccurate, was a Western response. These critics viewed it as a rejection of a glorified view of African history: a review in The Nation says that Ouologuem has "shattered the ... myth of a glorious African past.".
However, it was soon mired in controversy, as some of the passages appear to have been plagiarized from Graham Greene's It's a Battlefield and the French novel The Last of the Just (Le Dernier des justes, 1959) by Andre Schwartz-Bart. After a lawsuit by Greene, the book was banned in France, and has only recently been re-published. At the time, Ouloguem claimed that he had originally used quotations on some of the controversial passages, but his original manuscript is not available to verify this. He also claimed that in some early interviews, he had openly spoken of excerpting these passages, which is why it was not as controversial in France. Since 1977, the English edition carries the note: "The Publishers acknowledge the use of certain passages on pages 54-56 from It's a Battlefield by Graham Greene."
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