Karina Oborune 
Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling 
Presentation of Patrick Chabal’s book “Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling”.

Literature Review from the year 2009 in the subject African Studies – Literature, grade: A, University of Basel (Europainstitute), course: Europa-Kolloquium, language: English, abstract: On 14th May of 2009 at Europainstitut
Basel Patrick Chabal, professor at King’s
College London, presented his book
“Africa: The Politics of Suffering and
Smiling”. The former scholar of Harvard
and Cambridge has written or was cowriter
for such books as Cultures Troubles
(2006); Africa Works (1999); Power in
Africa (1992 and 1994) and Amílcar
Cabral (1982 and 2003). The question
usually asked about Africa: Why people
suffer? Suffer from poverty, violence,
wars… Patrick Chabal asks more simple
questions about these complex matters:
How do people define who they are?
Where do they belong? What do they
believe? How do they struggle to survive
and improve their lives? What is the
impact of illness and poverty? (EIB: 2009)
In doing so Chabal proposes a radically
different way of looking at politics of
“suffer and smile” in Africa (Zed Books,
2008: 5). To write about Africa in
objective way is challenging, but Patrick
Chabal tries to deal with this hard task.