Abstract: | This article addresses the question of whether black-white love relationships in sub-Saharan African novels tend to be represented as a battle between blacks and whites or as emotional encounters between individuals. Love in Africa is often evaluated as newly imported and imposed, but love songs and poems have been transmitted orally or transcribed since long. Plays and novels are also a rich source for a search for authentic African concepts of love. The author discusses novels by Ousmane Sembene, Hazel Mugot, Mariama Bā, William Conton, Peter Abrahams, and Richard Rive. It is significant that none of these novels lead to a happy ending for their interracial couples. The superiority of whites and inferiority of blacks, as imagined by whites, that enabled and were used to justify colonialism and apartheid interfere in various ways. Interracial love relationships are overshadowed and endangered by external forces. They have absolutely no chance if the partners do not know and perceive each other as equals. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |