Abstract
The expert study Language Thieves by Jean-Louis Joubert deals with the issue of beautiful literature written in the French language outside the geographical borders of France and the position of the French language in today's world. Francophone writers took French as a historical legacy of colonialism, or chose it under the pressure of exile.
How to write unalienated in the language of your master and slaver, the language of the Other? The author introduces readers to the world views of Patrick Chamoiseau, Édouard Glissant, Kateb Yacine, Boubacar Boris Diop, Assia Djebar, Michèle Lalonde and many others. Jean-Marc Moura's complex but not entirely functional theory of postcolonial literature, Gilles Deleuze's and Félix Guattari's peripheral, minor and territoryless literature, and Édouard Glissant's concept of Tout-Monde are superseded by Joubert's own original perspective on stolen language.
Although francophone writers deal with difficult identity and literary issues, they can nevertheless write something in the captured language that their mother tongue denied them.