Jean-Louis Njemba Medu (1902–1966) was a writer from Cameroon. He is seen as an early leader in African novels, as he published the science fiction/fantasy novel Nnanga Kon in 1932 in his native Bulu language. The story describes the meeting between the Bulu tribe and a white missionary; the title means "white ghosts" or "phantom albinos" in Bulu.

More than 30 years after Medu’s death, the novel was translated into French by Jacques Fame Ndongo and published in 1989 by Sopecam publishers in Yaoundé.

Early life and career

Jean-Louis Njemba Medou was a teacher who worked with missionaries from The American Presbyterian Church in Ebolowa, southern Cameroon. Later, he became a government worker in the Public Education system and often held the role of school principal. In 1952, he was assigned to the Education department and sent to the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud in France for a teaching internship. In 1957, he was involved in a traffic accident that made it difficult for him to continue teaching for a long time, so he changed careers. In 1964, he was appointed Administrative Secretary. He ended his career as second deputy prefect in Bafia. He died from hypertension and exhaustion on January 22, 1966.

Publications

"Nnanga Kon" is the first novel written by a Cameroonian author. It was rewritten in a poetic style by Rachel Efoua Zengue and published in a bilingual version in 2005. (EFOUA ZENGUE, Rachel, 2005)