Under the Midnight Sun
An African in Greenland
By Tété-Michel Kpomassie (Translated by James Kirkup)
15 Jun, 2022
Translation
Tété-Michel Kpomassie’s 1981 An African in Greenland is a memoir. Originally published in French, the 1983 English translation is by James Kirkup. The preface is by Jean Malaurie.
Born in 1941, Tété-Michel Kpomassie grew up in a traditional household in Togo. Startled by an inexplicably aggressive snake, he suffered a serious fall. Distrusting Western medicine, his father took young Tété-Michel to see a priestess, the price for whose treatment was that Tété-Michel Kpomassie should at a certain age come serve her religious organization in the sacred grove near Be.
Fate, in the form of Dr. Robert Gessain’s book The Eskimos from Greenland to Alaska, would intervene.