The great chief Batouala can no longer sleep as before in the tranquility of your high bush. Many worries prevent him from joining "The soft inner fire of sleep": his ritual functions, the proximity of the hunts, the obvious distance from his wife ... And above all, this dull rumor which repeats that the white man is overwhelming the black man and treats Him less well than his dog. Batouala, will he still be able to live happily on the banks of the great Nioubangui river? Batouala is the first "negro" novel written by a "negro". Its author, a West Indian official from the Colonial Ministry, raised a wave of scandal in 1921; and yet, that same year, he won the Prix Goncourt ... Reading this novel and its imperative preface will allow students to understand the context in which such a work and such a paradox could have arisen. It will also allow them to discover one of the first texts of "negritude", a literary and artistic movement of the twentieth century, which led to the emergence of a black culture and its consciousness.