Introduction

This book is dedicated to my mother, SIMONE PIN with my undying gratitude for putting me on that train to Annecy on July 11, 1937.

What a day! Fifty-one years later I still remember fondly July 11, 1937, the last day of my first serious school year. My very straight hair had been curled, I was wearing a blue organza dress made especially for me by my older cousin—a rated première main at Molyneux—and when my name was called, nervous, hot, and red-faced, I went to the podium to receive the prix d’excellence for the school year. It was one of those volumes bound in crimson with gold letters, which no French person who went to school in my generation could fail to remember; its title, Loulou in Africa, could not have been more typical in those days of diehard French colonialism.